Walking the sights and sounds

My wife and I are walkers. We don’t stroll about on our walks, we get out and WALK… everywhere, downtown, to the stores, the post office, to meetings, to jury duty, to vote, to lobby our government representatives. Walking is practical transportation, taking us to where we want to be and safely back home again.

One of the many advantages to walking, is that it places our eyes up at… well, eye level, where we can look around as we proceed forward and see what’s happening around us. Our ears are out there too, listening to the sounds about us, and, if we’re lucky and we’ve chosen our route well, the natural sounds devoid of the overweening traffic noise in our modern up to date cities.

One of the things that’s missing in our broken world is silence and the natural sounds that give texture and variety to the non-human world we inhabit. At night, here on the coast just a mile from the beach, we hear the surf patiently readjusting the beach, wearing down the coastal cliffs, ticking off the minutes, hours, days, years and millennia in a constant, unwavering cadence. The earliest inhabitants of this place must have heard this soothing sound all the time, before impatient and busy humans replaced quiet humans and the sounds of the surf with the cacophony of industrialized noise that marks our so-called modern civilization.

Walking is quiet. Walking is contemplative. Walking is an opportunity to talk with friends and neighbors, discuss the problems of the world and craft solutions.

Let’s take a stroll through the sights and sounds of our communities, human and non-human and “get their glad tidings.”

 

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