It’s Christmas morning.

Soggy matted leaves underfoot make for a quieter walk as I head deeper into the field where the sycamores live. Shrouded in an east-coast-like mist, I can hear last night’s thin coating of ice melting in random and singular drops from the branches of trees that line the path; if I close my eyes and forget that I’m wearing two layers of everything except socks and boots, it could be an early summer rain shower. A red-tail circles and screeches overhead, skimming the tops of the black walnuts and mulberries in the meadow. I shift my listening from the melting ice drops to its cry, and wish I was more fluent in hawk. I shall tuck the sound away in my soul for later study and meditation.

Just about the time I reach the corner where the field meets the western edge of the woods, it’s apparent that Santa gave one of the neighbors a new 4-wheeler. I followed the revving motory sound as it moved from the road I couldn’t see at the end of our driveway some eighteen acres from where I stood, and headed east through the back roads that wind through our little agri-hood. The sweet morning silence ripped clean through, I still suspended judgment and criticism, imagining the rider’s happiness spreading across his or her chilled and rosy cheeks, and let the engine’s roar fade as I pulled my attentive ear back to the hawk-song and ice-melt. It’s a skill I learned back in the 90’s when I was hard-of-hearing and heading toward deaf. Whenever the audio around me was too mumbled and indistinct, I could easily retreat to the silence within and stay there for moments or longer, until someone invited me to return to the conversation I’d just left. A couple of surgeries in 2004 slammed me back into a noisy and cacophonous world, and I’m not complaining, mind you (the first woodpeckers of spring still top the list of sounds I cherish when winter’s snow-muffled peace gives way to the party that IS new life on this land we love), but I emerged from the post-op experience with a new appreciation for one sound at a time, and a volume control in the capable hands of nature. I remember asking Patrick to stop by the gun store on our way home from a surgery follow-up appointment so I could get some earplugs. The look on his face…we just spent $60k (a grand and humorous exaggeration) to fix your hearing and you want to muffle the sounds?? He’s a patient soul; even got me a little plastic carrying case for them.

In the twenty years we’ve been here, I’ve noticed and willingly surrendered to my hunger for silence and solitude. Of course nature will do that, if we’re out in it long enough and often enough. I’m not the one to say, but wonder how that inner evolution has changed the way I carry myself around other humans. I’d enjoy hearing that I’m calmer, more respectful, patient and a better listener (please feel free to use the Comments feature on this blog to confirm that; private message me if you think I’ve got more work to do), or that I’ve at least moved the needle on a couple of those.

There are so many good teachers who share the acreage with us. A red tail hawk will perch unmoving for hours on a branch above the creek bank, its head bowed in almost-prayerful concentration as it waits for some future nourishment to crawl though the grasses. The cottonwoods to the west stand straight and towering as the wind sets their leaves to a dangly dance, and I notice the contrast of movement alongside stillness in the same living being. Much like us, I suppose, as our thoughts spool along in random noiseless travels while our hands rest quietly in our laps during a meeting, a sermon, or that cherished pre-dawn meditation practice that will shape the hours of the day ahead.

For reasons that are not my story to tell, I spent this Christmas morning alone with the land’s teachers. No gifts to unwrap, no holiday brunch around a table with others. And not much noise (the 4-wheeler’s intrusion now forgiven and nearly forgotten) save for melting ice dropping onto soggy leaves below my feet and the morning song of a hungry hawk above my head. This year, the best gift the land gave me was a lesson about being, not doing.

My heart is already writing the thank you note.