Summary
On the evening of my sixth day alone, I took my guitar onto the front porch. I was banging chords and singing This Land Is Your Land, when I heard some high-pitched squeals. Coyotes, I thought. But then more voices joined in - weird wailing and grunting. Elk! A bunch of them, and coming closer. A minute later, I heard a clattering sound, like water rushing over stones - the clamor of hooves on gravel - and a huge herd of elk, more than two hundred of them, poured down the road into the meadow. What an uproar! The calves bawled for their mothers, the cows called back, the bulls barked out orders, all in squeals and grunts and moaning expectorations. I sat quietly at first, afraid I might spook them. But then I strummed the guitar a little, and hummed a ragged harmony while the elk grazed loudly in the meadow.
Late on the afternoon of my fourth day alone, I was reading on the porch, when a chickaree scampered into the nearest pine and started barking at me. I hadn't done anything, hadn't moved except to turn book pages, hadn't made a sound. Why this squirrel Ht into me, I had no idea, but, in his simple, straightforward vocabulary, he gave me hell. He barked and barked, recoiling a little with each vocal detonation. I tried to ignore him, drawing on days of quiet composure. I kept to my reading, willing my mind to float on its own pool of silence.See the full content of this document
Extract
The Squeal of Silence
To savor the shiver of a breeze through aspen leaves, the zither of flies and bees, the beeping of chickadees - thafs what I'm here for. The sounds of this place are delicious, and the quieter I get, the more I hear. Qu...
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