Sit Still and Listen

At the urging of Beth, from The Cassandra Pages, I am reposting a post I put up Facebook earlier today. It came to me while I was walking to the train station near my house:

I’ve been trying to figure it out, why it is the “hiking” concerned with making miles and reaching summits has never really fulfilled “the call” inside me. I think I figured it out. Two weeks ago when leading the overnight Moonlight Hike from Mt. Jinba to Mt. Takao (just to the west of Tokyo), I met a new friend, Damon Mckinlay, from Damon Bay Photography. There was one moment during the walk, when we heard a strange call. Damon thought at first it was a giant flying phalanger (giant flying squirrel), but a few moments later discovered the frog calling from inside a rain barrel. He named it and described its life cycle to everyone, which I already knew. What struck me was how attuned he was to the surroundings, something that reminded me of my younger days. I used to get up before dawn, to wander the parks and woods and spend intense hours observing and learning, by direct viewing, everything I could about the natural world. And I was extremely knowledgeable. I was shocked during the hike and watching Damon, by how much I’d lost over the years as I got older, how much I’d let go, knowledge and experience that even today I hold as some of the best of myself. I used to go on very long, deeply immersive walks and bicycle rides that had little to do with getting somewhere or checking off a peak from a list. I was in love with the natural world. I’ve lost that. And I have to try to find it again. Slow walks and sitting still and looking, listening, smelling, tasting, touching, and waiting. I have to be inside the world again.

Thanks, Damon.

Here are the replies on Facebook:

Beth Adams, James Castleberry, Bärbel Makrutzki and 13 others like this.

Dale Favier: It’s amazing to me how easily the impulse to do something profoundly centering and important can be overlaid and eventually completely overwritten by the ambition to make some number, or be able boast of something in a sentence. How easily, say, a sitting meditation practice turns into wanting to be able to boast of sitting X minutes a day. It frightens me, how easily that happens. That’s how souls die, I think.
10 hours ago · Unlike · 3

Dale Favier: Anyway, what I meant to say — wonderful post!
10 hours ago · Unlike · 1

Miguel Arboleda: I think I’ve been aware of my soul dying for a long time. And it’s seems like I’ve been trying to fill the void with things like adding up the number of peaks I’ve bagged and scouring the Internet for hiking paraphernalia. But it’s always empty. I used to feel immense joy and a sense of completeness in my old walks. No one told me that it was what I was supposed to do; I just knew it, or felt it. And what was best about it was that my sense of self disappeared almost completely; I was, literally, “the world”.
10 hours ago via mobile · Like · 1

Dale Favier: I hear that. Though also I think we tend to remember more wholeness and joy than we actually had: I’m suspicious of believing too much in my golden past! Though whatever gets us to shake a little freer of “the world” is probably a good thing.
10 hours ago · Like

CNevin Thompson: I suppose if I were a comet, travelling along the elliptic, my moment of perihelion would have been the summer I was 31, just before our first son was born. Unfortunately, we humans do not get aphelion…
10 hours ago · Unlike · 1

Miguel Arboleda: Yes, I think I know what you mean. But I’ve never had a golden past, and have always been aware of great loneliness, bullying, and self-doubt. Even when I was 9 years old. To me, this joy in nature is not a state of perfection or silent timelessness. It is moving and ephemeral and fraught with hardship, danger, even death. But it feels right. I feel complete. And totally alive. Even today, when I slow down during my hikes, I always feel it, and can’t help myself laughing out loud, even singing. I do believe it is possible to live in synch with the living world. I think we’ve “thought ourselves out of” accepting that.
10 hours ago via mobile · Like · 1

Daniel Stuntz: Great post!
10 hours ago · Like

Bob Fourwheelbob Coomber: I write of that often – gauging a “good” trail day by mileage or whether you are first of a group to reach a summit…for me, I may hike a half mile and get in all the spiritual awakening I need. Whether from a flower, rock, animal or bird I find incredible beauty everywhere. And that frog? Surely would have made my hike memorable!
10 hours ago · Unlike · 1

Miguel Arboleda: Bob, you are another one if those people who seems to have incorporated that immersion into your life. Though I may not always comment, I read every one of your posts because of how you speak of it.

Some if the intense, beautiful, and peaceful moments in my life has been in a 20 meter square patch of garden when I was a boy. I learned more there than almost any other place I’ve been.
9 hours ago via mobile · Like

Viviana Lugo: That a very lovely statement
8 hours ago via mobile · Unlike · 1

Yohei Aoyagi: I agree. So I want the silence in the trail.
7 hours ago · Unlike · 1

Angela Beyer: Here here : ) when I was about 14 I had an awesome science teacher. One day he took the class to the bush behind the school. For that hour the lesson was to sit and listen. To hear as many birds and critters that we could – starting with the loud and close by… Then hearing those further away. It’s a fond memory and a technique I regularly use when walking or enjoying the wilderness : )
6 hours ago via mobile · Unlike · 1

Angela Beyer: Another time I was in Hokkaido with my bf and uncle. The bf (soon to be ex) had to climb Ashe Darke (the volcano thingy) to achieve yet another pin on his map. My uncle and I opted for a walk around the mountain and the beauty was spectacular! We sat on a rock next to 2 steam vents through the snow, drank coffee from a thermos and watched a bird in a surreal natural zen setting. I didn’t have a camera but that moment is etched in my mind forever – the serenity. My uncle and I often discuss that shared experience : ) Oh, The bf got photos of cloud… Not even a view for his efforts… And a tick in a box for mountains climbed lol.
6 hours ago via mobile · Unlike · 1

Miguel Arboleda: Nevin, do we not? I really wonder… Perhaps it’s not possible as hierarchy motivated, know-it-all ape.

Viviana, thanks. We live in a world that is far better than anything we could have up with.

Yohei, sometimes I want no trail, and no reason to be there. I don’t even want “me”, to spoil it.

Angela, since I met you in Victoria I’ve always loved the way you approached life. You don’t judge before you give something a try. The variety of your interests and experiences surprised me. You seem like someone who be happy anywhere.
4 hours ago via mobile · Like

Beth Adams: Miguel, please cross-post this wonderful and important post to your blog – I want to link to it for the Cassandra readers. It’s so crucial to get back to that deepest place inside us, to allow our soul to get back home. I’m glad Damon reminded you of things you already know, deep down; life makes us forget and wander away, but when the call comes clearly, we hear it.

Miguel Arboleda: Beth, thanks! I will. I was actually thinking on the train today, that I’d like to get back to writing these kinds of things on my blog again, and a little less often on FB. I’ll try to get up now, actually.