I spent a couple hours, and too much money at REI for hiking boots. The young salesman wanted to know if I was going hiking or backpacking, and what kind of terrain I would be in. The family is planning a five-day hike in the Sierra Nevada, and I want to be prepared. It's not like when I was younger and tripped around the Himalayas in my cheap tennis shoes like a mountain goat. Really, it's all so I can get away to the wilderness for a few days.
So many of us lead such busy lives, getting away is almost unthinkable. Especially on the East Coast, there's always a traffic jam within driving distance. We always have a phone, or music device even when we're doing "quiet time". We don't have a chance to reflect. Our minds are always so busy.
When I was teaching in the Himalayas, there was a question if we should allow students iPods on their required hikes. I always confiscated kids' music players and phones on the hikes I chaperoned. I wanted them to have the chance to hear something really important on the trek, like the call of a hoopoe, or the scurry of a small animal in the underbrush, or the whoosh a condor's wings makes as it rides the wind below where you stand on the mountain, or the call of the goatherd from the village on the facing mountain.
People don't know how to listen. We're afraid of silence. With our devices we create our own world around us and are not even aware of others -- or a smile and a nod nothing more. There's no invitation to engage. Some kids go to school in the Himalayas and never even see the snows.
Take a minute of silence, and listen. You might hear something. Important.
So many of us lead such busy lives, getting away is almost unthinkable. Especially on the East Coast, there's always a traffic jam within driving distance. We always have a phone, or music device even when we're doing "quiet time". We don't have a chance to reflect. Our minds are always so busy.
When I was teaching in the Himalayas, there was a question if we should allow students iPods on their required hikes. I always confiscated kids' music players and phones on the hikes I chaperoned. I wanted them to have the chance to hear something really important on the trek, like the call of a hoopoe, or the scurry of a small animal in the underbrush, or the whoosh a condor's wings makes as it rides the wind below where you stand on the mountain, or the call of the goatherd from the village on the facing mountain.
People don't know how to listen. We're afraid of silence. With our devices we create our own world around us and are not even aware of others -- or a smile and a nod nothing more. There's no invitation to engage. Some kids go to school in the Himalayas and never even see the snows.
Take a minute of silence, and listen. You might hear something. Important.
