Once upon a time winter was a quiet time. The other day I was walking in the cemetery, but it was not quiet. Three employees walked along with leaf blowers attached to their arms, blowing leaves into a pile. At least they were blowing them in the same direction that the wind was blowing – at 40+ MPH. The cemetery is planted with numerous evergreens, mostly blue spruce and ponderosa pine, but all of the lower branches, up to about 15 feet, have been cut off. I presume this is to prevent them from growing over the tombstones that have been adorned with garish plastic flowers and angel figurines. The desecration of and the deprivation, by the removal of the trees’ lower limbs, detracts pitifully from their beauty. They are further violated when they are starved, by removing the fallen leaves that would have fed the soil beneath them, which in turn would have fed the trees through their roots. This is all done in the name of dead bodies that are no longer occupied by their former souls.
This morning there is a neighbor across the way cutting a mountain of firewood with a chainsaw. Added to its intrusive hum are the snowblowers that join in harmony to remove last night’s freshly fallen snow. All of this noise, all of this disregard for life is considered normal. Both the people creating the noise, as well as those who must listen to it, simply block it out with headphones blaring in their ears, or by turning up the volume on their TV’s; but there is no escaping the noise. Even in the few remote areas, the quiet is often disturbed by an airplane or a drone flying overhead.
The quietness of a winter’s day has been lost to most of us. The quieting of our own mind is the best that we can hope for.
