Susan Tweit has posted a lovely, thoughtful piece, "Saving the Silence..." on our Wildness blog. It's about our need to find places where we can get away from the noise that constantly bombards us. Please read it, and share some of your own experiences of silence.
Blooming now at MeadowKnoll, our mountain pinks (Centaurium beyrichii), along the roads, in rocky patches, on limestone ledges. Each single plant is its own brave bouquet of vibrant, vital pink. The sight of these exuberant flowers scattered across the hillside makes me smile, inside and out.
The dogs and I heard a rattlesnake on our walk this morning. There was no mistaking that dry, "don't-tread-on-me" warning that broke the sunrise silence. Not a surprise, for this is snake country, and they have just as much right to the land as we do. But we took the hint and went in the opposite direction. The dogs are vaccinated against rattler venom, but I'm not. Also seen on the walk: a small slider, heading for the creek as fast as his stubby turtle legs could take him; raccoon tracks, and the remains of a crawdad that was the raccoon's midnight snack; a purple obedience plant in Meadow Marsh (where I haven't seen them before); a patch of prairie petunia along the stone wall; a great blue heron, flying low toward the lake; a red-tailed hawk, flying high, looking for breakfast. Heard but not seen: a painted bunting and a raft of redbirds. Oh, and the sun! It's shining for the second morning in a row, which is by itself a thing to celebrate, after two weeks of rain-every-day.
Reading note. What we do best comes not from our heads but our hearts, from an ineffable impulse thay resists logic and definitions and calculation: love. Love is what connects us to the rest of the living world, the divine urging from within that guides our best steps in the dance of life.--From The San Luis Valley: Sand Dunes and Sandhill Cranes, by Susan J. Tweit