Quote from the Sea

Recently I read Gift from the Sea, by Ann Lindbergh, for book club . There were a few gems in it, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend it.

I did find one quote that thrilled me. Every time I read it I find a new meaning:

p. 38 "It is not the desert island nor the stony wilderness that cuts you from the people you love. It is the wilderness in the mind, the desert wastes in the heart through which one wanders lost and a stranger."

One reason I love it is that it reminds me of a favorite poem of mine.

Desert Places

Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast
In a field I looked into going past,
And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last.

The woods around it have it—it is theirs.
All animals are smothered in their lairs.
I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares.

And lonely as it is, that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it will be less—
A blanker whiteness of benighted snow
With no expression, nothing to express.

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars—on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.

-Robert Frost