Away We Stay: Songs of The Road
A crisp Sunday morning. Normally I'd be a ball of nerves getting ready to run with a trail group that vastly outstrips my abilities. Instead, I'm on injured reserve. I love being up in the slow hours of the morning but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t kind of like the break that injury is giving me an excuse for. It’s not a weakness in my will, just in my muscle fibers.
I am trying to maintain my morning movement habit but today it's for a casual walk not a heart-pounding can-I-make-it kind of thing. I miscalculate the time it takes me to cover distance while walking and the roar of cars from the interstate is the only thing I can hear for the first half mile of this trail. I know there’s a corner coming up where a hill blocks the noise but it’s always seemed closer than this.
It's distracting and I don't like it. One of top three reasons I like hiking trails is the resounding kind of quiet. You can’t help but hear it. After a little while with that special kind of silence - the kind that presses down on the back of your skull but in a good way - you start to hear what fills the space instead of what doesn't. You notice when it's two pine trees rustling together versus an entire stand of them. How aspen leaves sound when they catch the barest available breeze and clap shoulders with their leaf compatriots.
“Does it work? Kind of. This is how I feel about meditation. Yes, it is effective, but only in small spurts. Obviously I’m not doing it right.”
I expect that instead of the inescapably steady friction of tires meeting concrete. As with all irritating things, it is impossible to ignore. The car-forward theory of modern American culture is something I'm shaking my head about while walking up the gentle gravel slope.
But then, the birds break through. It's early but they've already performed their morning vocal stretches and are chit chatting with one another. It's spring so there's a lusty edge to the criss-crossing melodies I'm interrupting by walking on the trail. They flit here and there and don't pay any mind to either me or the roar of the road.
So. I propose a test for myself. Can I hear only the birds? Can I focus on them? Can I exist with something so obnoxious and so against my expectation and filter out what doesn't serve me? The answer for 90% of the rest of my life is a resounding no. So this is good practice. For at least the fifteen minutes until I round the corner and the hill throws those gnarled engine sounds right back at the drivers in their hermetically sealed containers.
Does it work? Kind of. This is how I feel about meditation. Yes, it is effective, but only in small spurts. Obviously I'm not doing it right. Obviously the surgical clearing of my mind is something that requires whole armfuls of hours of practice. But every few breaths I can do it. I can hear that the bird on the right is more tweet-tweet and the one of the left is low and gutteral. A bit like the difference between the 18 wheeler going by and a Prius. Which proves the aforementioned point that this clarity only works for a hot minute.
Birdsong can be louder than engines. Focus is the instrument that amplifies the lovely and dampens the constant hum of commerce. It is possible to hear the thing that fills and silence the thing that doesn't. Not for very long and, certainly not for me, very consistently.
Start, though. It’s a start.
Inspired by events in Round Valley, Utah
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