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Quiet. You like quiet? I do, but where to find it, that’s the bazillion dollar question. It used to be that quiet was every where, in your backyard, down at the park, over at Uncle Skid’s boat dock early in the morning, you could lift the rug up in the dining room and what would you find? Quiet. Just laying there in a big pile not doing a thing. You didn’t have to go looking for it. I sat in my favorite chair the other day, reading, drinking a cup of Jasmine tea, just listening, trying to isolate the different noises I was hearing. Even with the TV off and no radio on there were noises everywhere. The refrigerator would kick on, there were hums and other soft sounds from stuff I didn’t even know was running. Noises from outside made their way inside and I’ve got really thick walls because the big house here is made of logs. It was a constant battering of sound. I thought back to where and when I had last heard nothing but silence.

It was in Monument Valley, that incredible place where the total experience can overwhelm all of your senses before you even get a chance to go “Whoa!, Man, it’s quiet here’.  It is one of the places where you can find true silence. In fact there is so much quiet here it’s deafening. Sometimes you have to put up with some tourists, I didn’t say the quiet was constant, or wait until that herd of goats makes it way over the dune, or for that lizard to scuttle back under the rock outcropping, but mostly it is quiet, really, really quiet. The wind will blow but there is so much space it can’t begin to fill it and you hardly notice it.

If you want to experience this go to Monument Valley, late spring is a good time as it’s not too hot yet, the crowds are still back home being noisy, and find John Ford’s Point, that’s the picture up there at the top of the page, walk out a bit, find a shady spot against the cliff wall and sit. Soon your ear drums will stop spasm-ing from the constant bombardment of civilization and the quiet will come down on you like a Tsunami. Some people can’t stand it when this happens and they run off screaming into the desert with their hands over their ears, never to be heard from again. It’s a good bet they didn’t really want to hear silence anyway and probably should have just stayed home with the TV playing softly in the background. If looking out over all that quiet is too much for you and it seems that you can’t take it all in, just squint a little or even close your eyes for a moment and you’ll settle out. Sometimes you have to ease into this new stuff. But if experiencing quiet is what you want to do, you know what to do now, you know where to go, so just do it. And remember, no iPods, that’s cheating, you can wear sunglasses though, that’s accepted.