Or to notice, among the truest of silences . . .
A savannah wave across the broom-straw. The passing shadow of a bird or cloud. The sun setting through a screen of pines red and white. The flash of a firefly in the night.
Sometimes solid thinking requires the redefined quiet so readily available 24/7 in the solitude of forests, and so rare in the world on this side of the river with its amplified noise intrusive and interfering.
The Great Anonymous found in the region “shining shores and beaver brooks, owl and rabbit trading looks.” He (or she) was right about that, as was Satchel Paige in this: “The social rumble ain’t restful.” And historian Paul Johnson well comprehends one of God’s best creations:
“Sensible things, trees. They don’t get angry, though the wind shakes and tosses them. They are beautiful but never vain. They may grow old but they do not surrender to weariness, cynicism, or despair. They are upright but not proud, hard but not cruel, shady and sometimes crooked but never dishonest. They whisper in a secret tongue, drop their leaves like hints, and sway to the music of time.”
In multiple ways trees are salvational, and they may be thinkers. They just might understand what the true quiet now so rare on the planet is all about. They also might understand the why of wrestling a new outhouse across a river and up a bank — the importance in it that surpasses Satchel’s “social rumble” or a front-row seat (via TV) to glom any of various ’crats doing their thing.
So in such a place count me among those who will take a quiet redefined this way any time — and have not a single regret.