The Same Landscape

She went hiking with some people who were all more of the doing type, while she was only, or mostly, a being type. Partway through their planned route, they came to a beautiful spot by a bend of a small river, where there were a few trees making gracious shade, and large flat rocks beckoning to be a seat there by the river's voice. She decided to remain there, while they continued onward. She watched them grow smaller as they moved into the distance, following the curve of the path ever upward into the hills. Where she sat was high enough to see the sagebrush rolling out and down, to see some of the river's path to lower land, and the higher hills in a dark, protective curve behind and to the north of her. She sat in the shade, resting, and breathing in the scent of the sage, the smell of warm stones and sand. She listened to the slight sounds of dry grasses and leaves moving when the wind moved over us, and the small song of the river caressing its stony bed. This was its early autumn song; it would sing a louder one, no doubt, and do a wilder dance, come spring, when the snows melted on the hillsides and flowed into its course. Insects in the brush sang in bursts, a lone hawk moved high overhead in hieratic circles; and somewhere hidden from her, a bird called in notes she didn't recognise, so she couldn't put a human name to the bird, only listen and love it wordlessly, as a guest in its home. The whole place shimmered with the joy of sunlight on water, the gratitude of moisture in a dry land. She pulled off her boots and socks, rolled up her trousers, slipped out of her shirt, and waded into the water. Surprisingly cool under the strong desert sun, it drew the fatigue of walking from her and filled her with the same joy or wordless peace that lay over all the place, that was written on the sky in the hawk's flight and the high thin clouds drifting, that was in the song of the bird and the insects and the leaves and the water.

She didn't know how long she sat in the river or drowsed there afterward on the shaded rocks. She drank a little of the river water, sacramentally, although she had a full bottle in her pack. She ate a bit of the food she'd brought. Her clothes now dry, she put her shirt on again. She became part of the song there, in her silence; sometimes, you have to be silent to be truly part of a song. This is a mystery.

Eventually, the others returned. They rejoined her, speaking about the wide views they had enjoyed from the ridge tops, moving as a group to the river to splash hot faces and arms, though no one else drank from it. They talked of the snake they had glimpsed at the edge of the path, and the steepness of the last section of the climb. They asked her what she had been doing there, all that time, and she said lamely that she had been resting on the rocks and listening to things. That she had gone into the river for a bit. That it was a very comforting place. She said the kinds of things that being people say to doing people, knowing that it wouldn't mean much. Then they all got up, putting on packs and hats, making ready to hike back out. She dipped her cotton scarf into the water and tied it wet around her neck, for coolness, but also to keep the kindly spirit of the river with me as long as she could. In silence, she said her farewells to the river and the stones; the earth and the sage; the trees, the sky, the hawk; the hidden insects and unknown bird.

She didn't miss the view from the hills. She didn't miss the conquering exertion of the climb, the 'achievement' of it. She wondered if any of them felt a kinship with the hawk up there on the ridge, or if their spirits had time to hear the song of the land as they moved through it. She wondered how different the wind sounded up there, and if they noticed it. She wondered what they would remember of the place later. Somehow, she was especially happy to rest in being more and doing less that day. She would carry the taste of that water with her, and the scents and sounds and shifting light and colours, forever. She would have the peace of that place in her bones.