For a few moments on my drive home tonight, I sat at the intersection of a small side street and a larger road that’s mostly closed for construction. I was the only one sitting there, and there were no cars coming along the larger road. The work crews were a quarter mile removed from me.
It was quiet.
Not silent, but quiet, like it used to be when I was growing up in South Dakota. The dry grass of the slough across the road hissed at me, overprotective of the birds and insects I could hear inside of it.
I shut off my engine and just listened, remembering the days that Bonnie and I would spend exploring our old farm, talking for hours about nothing while we climbed over rusted barbed wire and dead trees, surrounded by sounds that have since been pushed down by the static of tires on pavement.
It took me five years of living in Colorado before I could hear these sorts of noises — you have to listen much more carefully out here to catch it — nature has learned to tread quietly around the big city.
