Recently, I took a course on nature writing that got me writing, thinking, quiet, outdoors, observing, and appreciating in new ways. Here are a few musings that came out of it…the “sounds” of silence:
The creek’s water rushes by where I sit in the meadow, slowed by the dam the ranchers have set to divert its course. Snow runoff continues to crawl and creep down our mountains, though there’s far too little of it this year.
A bird sounds from a place I cannot see in the tall cottonwoods that flank the trees. Suddenly, he soars, fearlessly diving into the clear blue sunny sky. I see it is a sparrow’s song that lightened the afternoon.
The wind stirs everything around me, from the houndstongue flower and milkvetch grass of the meadow to the shrubs and trees. It winds and wanders its way up to the jagged peaks of the Cimarron Range of the San Juans. These foothills of Chimney and Courthouse Peaks are my home. Here, I return to the sound of a heartbeat that is not my own, yet welcomes me into itself.
The wind returns to me, settling in the banks of the river and its trees, stirring my soul. I’m reminded of what Wendell Berry said, “Write a poem that does not disturb the silence from which it came.”
*****
I journeyed to the lake today in the quiet morning hours.
What a gift to sit on the sunny shore almost alone—
to see the easy morning tide and the ripples on the water,
the light that hits variant colors of stone.
On the rocky banks grow green grasses, weeds, and trees,
mama cottonwoods and their babies.
I admire those plants that come to thrive
out of the barren, hard, seemingly lifeless places.
There is life everywhere.
I find one shooting out of both rock and water with baby’s breath flowers,
though my field guide says it is broadleaved pepperweed.
Some “weeds” that grow in our lives seem undesirable at first,
But they bloom and flower and surprise, shading us and others with their leaves.
SparrowSong 