At least once a week, I begin my mornings out on the edge of the woods, sitting, listening to the life of the world there. Usually, the sun has not come over the horizon yet. Usually, the activity of birds and squirrels and deer are immediately apparent. All of them awoke well before me and have begun their day’s work and play in the woods.
These days, though, there is a different sound in the woods. It is the sound of silence. I’ve been visiting the woods regularly for much of my life, and I’ve come to think of this silence in the woods in December as the silence of winter. There is no other time of year like it in my experience. The birds are silent. The squirrels are moving only now and again, but not continually like other times of the year. If deer appear, they stand as if statuary witnesses of the silence. There is this sound of silence. Then, a leaf falls, and the silence is broken. Once it hits the ground, the sound of silence resumes.
When we stand in the woods before this silence of winter, we are witnessing a deeply mystical and profound drama. The forest is reminding us of a core mystery. The forest is reminding us that the Great Silence (for me, one of the names of the divine) is always accessible, and it is always within us. We just have to stop. We just have to stop. We just have to stop–and witness it.
When we witness the Great Silence, in the woods, and in ourselves, we are in that moment, that very present moment, renewed into the life of the world. Dare we say it–as children of stardust–that we are renewed into the life of the Cosmos?
~Bob Patrick
Thanks for sharing. We need not fear the sound of silence – I think that now but for many years I avoided it not knowing how wonderful it could be
This is beautiful Bob. Thank you for the reminder of the beauty of silence at this time of the year.