wind scarped hills....

Color has deserted the trees. I can see only the tan of the Beech leaves that dot the woods.No pale yellow leaves curled to look like ribbon. No Bradford pear's red diamonds out there.What I do see looks mysterious to me. Between the grey tree trunks it looks like a mist that is beckoning me to the river. The Flint is calling.

This time of the year feels like desert time to me. Simple. Quiet. Bare, spare, just the essentials, the trunks to hold the branches. Darkness coming sooner. No leaves rustling, no lawnmowers, few birds.Just deep silence that feels so rich in its nothingness.Silence.

Once, I had an experience of silence that has never left me.The place where I stood was on the brink of the Painted Desert and the quiet made me think of floating in outer space.We were at a pull off and what I saw stretched as far as any eagle could fly.I was surrounded and covered over with quiet.The postcard above states that .."Hopi Indians live near here in a desolate region of multi-colored sand and erosions ever changing in color at different hours of the day."

I looked up desolate and the words are forbidding: abandoned, lonely, gloomy, depressed.This was not my experience on that precipice of so long ago because in that moment I heard the Voice say: "This is Me, I am in this great Silence."It is in desolation that I can hear the voice who is always there, a breath away in the quiet.