Lost post: 5/24/2010

[Periodically, I discover in my post list one that was long ago started, but never finished or published. Here's one such unfinished musing, from over a year ago. I'm not going to try and finish it now, though I know I had more to say about the winds in the grasses and the yipping prairie dogs and losing site of everything but the trees and the plains. You can see pictures of this particular outing (the one that I don't actually really get into, in the post below) here.]

Our lives-- even when relatively at calm-- have so much noise in them. Right now, I'm sitting in my apartment. I can hear the staccato click of the keyboard keys as I type, and the quieter whir of the running computer in the background. I can hear the clock ticking evenly in the kitchen, and the occasional passing car or pedestrian through the open window. My parakeets are squawking and whistling contentedly to each other over my shoulder, and the cat is barreling around the apartment with crazed fervor, paws thundering off floors and furniture. Upstairs, the neighbor's dog walks around more sedately, nails tapping on the creaking floorboards with each step. The next-door neighbors are listening to "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun."  All that, and the TV isn't even on.

A couple weeks ago on a Sunday afternoon, I found myself with time on my hands (the semester having just ended), a warm sun beating down and a soft breeze moving in. So I hopped in the car and took myself out 15 miles to the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge. I've been wanting to check it out for a while, and it seemed as good a day as any. I headed out 10 or 15 miles to where the northeastern suburbs of Denver start to melt into the plains-- at least for the stretch of land that comprises the refuge.

Immediately after stepping out of my car in the small visitor center parking lot, I noticed the deep silence of the place. After a brief foray into the visitor center I headed down the path toward the smaller and closer of the two man-made lakes on the refuge's grounds. I heard the sound of my own feet, crunching softly on the beaten gravel-and-sand path; the whisper of wind flowing around me; the songs of various birds as they flitted past or alighted on the interpretive signposts which occasionally lined the path. The quiet makes you slow down, walk more softly, so as not to disturb it. The silence is almost a presence, in and of itself.