I am spending the week at the family cabin in Wyoming. The old place needs a fresh coat of cabin oil applied to the split log siding every few years, and the old parents have washed out their paint brushes for the last time and handed the chore down to me. I can’t complain. Labor being cheap in Laramie, we probably could have brought on help, but living in San Francisco, I jumped at the opportunity to spend a week in Medicine Bow Forrest.

Suddenly, here I am, clinging to a ladder on the side of a tall cabin overlooking a sunny canyon of willows and beaver ponds. The air is FRESH. What a simple thing to rejoice over. But when you get it (and if you haven’t in a while, you need to, just to remember the starting line) it is heavenly. But the single most potent element that has slapped me silly like a drop of well-juice from god, is the silence. It is startling how much sound we deal with in urban environments. None of it very interesting either. Tires and motors make a city howl. Refrigerators and and AC systems provide a steady drone of hissy groans that fill up that part of our mind that always listens. On this ladder, suddenly, I hear the pitter patter of fast moving feet. I look down to the dirt road, some 100 feet away, and I see two foxes tearing along. I can hear them perfectly. As they fade away I realize the only other thing I can still hear is the barely perceptible wind in the trees, spread over the huge distance of the valley. It sounds delightful.

In the city we are all wrapped up. We get massaged for the tactile sensations, we have dessert for the flavor, wear perfume for the smell, hang art for the eye, play music for the ear. We layer all these things upon ourselves, mummifying our consciousness in bandages of input. How pleasant it is to strip away those layers and breath something clean, listen to something quiet and unpredictable, take a deep breath and release it, and be happy. I totally recommend it every once in a while for any human being.