Greensong
   A lifetime rendering of chaotic cacophony used to be all I ever knew. The money, time, goals, resources, and emotions all of myself and of everyone else screaming and running and passing and falling around me, above me, and below. "This is life", I had accepted long ago. Yet, as I stepped out the passenger seat of a roadtrip to nowhere, that led to a state park nestled between two giant, rocky cliff faces, I felt it all melt away. A feeling of cotton balls in my ears, like the near-deaf experience after a loud and frantic rock concert. I stepped into the grass, and heard the individual blades crush beneath my sole. The sound of my silent breath, as insects buzzed an arm's distance from my ear and I still could hear their flight. This place was special. A sanctuary. I spoke in hushed tones with my companions, amazed to hear my own voice as it resonated from my chest upward. A feeling of nakedness followed by oppressive silence overwhelmed me as I fought a knot forming in my throat. In an attempt to collect myself, my mind pulled images of the woman whom I wished I could share this amazing sensation with - but the void absorbed her quickly along with the rest of my thoughts. I was no longer man, I was observer. Audience to the great quiet.
   Carefully, meticulously, I slowly wandered the grounds of this place, stopping occasionally to listen to the sounds within the silence. Birds chattering, animals crying out along a bubbling stream in the far distance, the rattling buzz of each individual cicada that was in my proximity...I swear I was able to hear an active beehive in the tall tree I was standing next to. The detail, the crispness and clarity in these small sounds, it was entrancing. I amused myself with an idea I stole from a book I read when I was still a teenager, and tried to listen for the "Greensong" - the music of nature, unhindered by the advent of man's many whirring tools and trinkets. And as I stood plainly in an open field, eyes closed and pointed to the sky, I heard it. Even if for just a moment, it was as if the endless, seamless sounds coming from every living thing around me were responding to themselves as a whole through harmonies, melodies, rhythm and tempo. No voice was out of place, like everything was intentional. In that moment, accidents and failures ceased to exist, and I heard a grand instrument in the structure of our world. Yet still, now that my mind is free to wander and reflect once again, the only word I can conceive of to describe this awesome orchestration I was treated to is "silence".    -Lost Maples State Park in Vanderpool, TX