Stopping by fields on a snowy morning

If I could choose my favorite thing about living here at the ass end of nowhere it would be the silence. I grew up spitting distance from two major expressways and close enough to one of Ohare International's main approach paths that I could tell the difference between an L1011 and a 757 and could identify every major airline company on sight by the time I was 9, so needless to say, it was never truly quiet there. Even at 2AM, the soft susurrous of the Tri-state and the Kennedy was there. But out here in my little town of 5500 it is very different, especially in the winter. The rest of the year, various animal sounds are everywhere, whether it's crickets or birds or what have you, but in winter there is nothing but the wind and the rare truck crossing the IL-89 bridge.

Now, if my place is quiet, my brother's is bloody silent. I at least have neighbors. He, on the other hand, lives on the edge of a state park and his closest neighbor is 3/4 mile away. I got to experience this yesterday. My bro, bless him, wants to be a farmer, and he found a good deal on a 14' by 52' greenhouse from a local nursery. Guess who got recruited to help dismantle and move it. Nothing like a little outdoor work in January to get the ol' blood going, eh? Even better, he and his teenage son show up with the back of his F250 loaded up with a cord of firewood to drop off at his place beforehand, lucky me.

So after stacking the wood, he and his son go inside to get some tools together, leaving me outside. It was about as nice a day as you can ask for in Illinois in January, about 20, sunny, only a light breeze, and I was plenty warm from all the work unloading the truck, so I took a walk over to the cornfields that border his property on the south. It was a beautiful view, the land gently rolling away, the nooks and hollows of the fallow earth filled with a thin scrim of snow, the sky that perfect, crystalline blue you only get on cold, clear, winter days, and everything utterly silent except for the faint, sandpapery whisper of the wind.

I have had profound, mystical experiences before, some so powerful I thought the top of my head would come off, but the feeling looking out over those fields was different. I could feel the calm and the dreamless sleep of Nature in winter, I could feel the silence and solitude. It was a far calmer, a far more steady and accepting experience than I'd ever had. Instead of being swept along like a leaf on a river, I was floating in a mirrorlike pool.

I had a good 10 minutes of just absorbing this sensation, this feeling of suspension, before I was interrupted. Ah, I do love the silence out here, but I did after all have "promises to keep", so I had to bid those fields goodbye.

CS