Silence is golden

Sometimes when I walk, and I've been walking awhile, I feel like I can walk forever.

The endorphins kick in - those brain chemicals that cause sensations of happiness and well-being - and my legs move on their own volition and never wanna stop. Just keep moving along...

I walk every evening down this lovely, one-lane tiny country road beside our new place. It has lots of dips and curves to it and is lined with trees, cows, and silence.


One of my favorite roads near the new Ranch. Forgive the photo - it was taken with a cell phone.

Just two months ago, I was a girl trying to pursue this dream living on the outskirts of a city with a dizzying population of 217,074.

Now, I'm transformed by the landscape of a township the size of a shoe box.

The corn fields demand patience. They teach me to stand tall and keep my head held high.

The cows, my nearest neighbors, mooo in response to the silence. The teach me to lay low when the days are long and hot.

Trains part the silence.



There are still lots of very active railroads around the new Ranch. I love hearing them. Heading west. Heading east. Always heading somewhere. The promise of movement, of eagerly turning a corner to watch a bright, new land unfold like the unfurling of a painting. They just keep moving along, not forceful - their own inertia enough.

Some days, I feel an itch in my heart, a restlessness that is unforgiving and relentless. It moves me forward and is propelled by that same inertia - an eager curiosity and a determination not to let go, to keep going, to see what's around the next corner.

I am eager to see what's around the corner for this next season. Stay tuned, and as always, I bow to the infinite that is in you - Namaste

"Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence"

For a long time, I sit with them in the snow. We watch the boughs grow heavy as the silence piles up around us.



There is no silence like a steady snowfall.



I watch the dogs celebrate, prancing through powder, snow collecting on their backs. They shake it off, unfazed.

Jack comes to me, his one eye a blue glint in the white. He shifts his weight, stretching into a downward dog before rising and sniffing at the snow beneath his feet.

Yeti prances over, staring at me, his big brown eyes intense, inquisitive. So much going on inside that head.



Soon Ruffian follows.



And Big Brown.



Slowly, they present themselves to me. Big Brown touches a cold nose to my cold nose. She smells like cold, like wet earth. She nuzzles me.

The dogs defrag me when I am fragmented, keep me sane. After spending the entire day with rowdy, hormonal 6th and 7th graders, this snow and the dogs - and the tranquil silence that accompanies them - is a welcome relief.

For years, I had Max Ehrmann's Desiderata above my desk when I worked in hospitals. Of all the noisy, hasty places, a hospital has to be, by far, one of the more urgent.

But I found myself going back to the opening line of this great piece today, as I walked the boisterous and explicitly loud halls of an urban middle school.

"Go placidly amid the noise and the haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence."