![]() Marion Franck has lived in Davis for more than 40 years.On Wednesday, May 18th, join people from across Greater Cleveland ( and the world) for the most important event of the year. Will living with COVID ever become more like my second walk? I catch myself smiling even though I am simply staring at the wide-open branches of a big tree. I know this walk is the perfect length and I won’t get tired. On my second walk I am able to welcome the silence. Bigger changes, coming in quick succession, like those accompanying COVID (masks, tests, Zoom, vaccines, hospital death counts) and we feel pretty darn uncomfortable. Add one different item - silence - and that’s fine.Īdd concerns about when to arrive at the meeting place, when to stop talking, and how fast to walk, and it’s normal to be distracted. Maybe that’s why COVID-19 and everything associated with it has thrown me and so many others for a loop. When I’m going to do something different from usual, and maybe a little difficult, I like the rest of the world around me to be predictable. I know when to arrive, where to park, and what will happen. What I’m getting from this second walk, which I didn’t get from the first one, is a comfortable feeling of familiarity. Raised eyes, he says, lead to positive thinking, something I definitely need ever since COVID-19 disrupted everything more than two years ago. Instead, I raise my binoculars, keeping my eyes up instead of down, as our leader advises. I notice the behavior of the two people ahead of me (they’re big on reading signs) but I don’t keep an eye on the whole group. I choose to be near the back of the line instead of in front. On my second silent walk, other people distract me far less. Shall we pause here? Who made these nice wooden bridges? Do you see the egret? Even though it was easy to avoid speaking to other walkers, imaginary conversations with them spooled in my head. I didn’t seem to be in the right meditative state. Should I pass him? What is he doing? Oh, he’s reading a tree label. Then there was the man in front of me who kept slowing down. We walked single-file, 6 feet part, which sounds easy, but I kept encountering difficulties.įirst there was my own brain, trying to figure out the nature of this group, and noticing oddities like the woman who brought a 2-year old. I found that even in silence other humans distract me. I don’t know if words disrupt the lives of other people as much as they do mine, but I suspect the answer might be yes, or why would anyone propose silent walks?īut my first silent walk didn’t solve the problem. As soon as I hear words, I am distracted. My brain simply refuses to exclude words or ignore them, no matter how unimportant and forgettable they might be. I have a specific problem: I am unable to read or write or sometimes even think if I hear spoken words anywhere around me. The fact is, I need silence pretty desperately in order to live a life that works for me. And although we talk enthusiastically over dinner, we’re both pretty quiet during the day. This kind of silence is familiar to me because I spend a lot of time writing words rather than hearing them.Įven when I’m not writing, I don’t play music or run the TV, so my house is silent, except when I speak to my husband. The word “silence,” as applied to this activity, means the absence not of all sound but of human speech. I hear birds calling, cows mooing and the wind. Here’s a question: what counts as silence? The outdoors is peaceful but not silent. I couldn’t answer them very well, nor did I manage to write about the experience, so I decided to go a second time. “Silently” is the key word, the intriguing word, the reason I signed up the first time and the reason a number of my friends asked me afterwards how I liked it. He confirms the information from the American River Conservancy website, which says, “We welcome you to join us to find relaxation and peace while silently appreciating the beauty of our natural environment.” I greet the people near me out loud and await the opening remarks of our leader who will explain the morning’s activity, also out loud. I know the answer because this is the second time I’ve taken this walk, a choice that turns out to be illuminating and even offers me a new way to look at the COVID pandemic. But when is the silence - so contrary to our normal behavior when meeting people - supposed to begin? ![]() ![]() We’ve come to historic Wakamatsu Farm, the first Japanese settlement in America, near Placerville, because we signed up for a silent walk. on a Sunday morning and I’m standing in a group of 15 middle-aged and older people who are trying to figure out if it’s OK to talk to each other. ![]()
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