Hearing Simple

Fifteen year-olds scare me to death. I’ve never been cool, and 15 was when my nerdiness fleshed out in all its glorious fullness. And now, the great karmic card dealer has dealt me this hand: I’ll be living with a whole posse of them in the Tetons for the next three weeks.

I’m used to guiding grown-ups, teaching adults how to travel through wild places, climb remote peaks, and go poo in the woods. Adults are comfortable and easy—they are, well, just like me in a lot of ways. But I’m a guide, which means most adults are quick to point out that I am, well, just like these 15-year-olds in a lot of ways.

[Hearing simple, somewhere in Wyoming. Photo: localcrew]

This crew—all boys—is LOUD; all loud voices, noisy bodies, clamorous movements. They come from loud places where they have to struggle to hear and to be heard. For the first week, they are the shameful dinner guests. Beneath towering limestone cliffs and vaulting granite peaks, along rushing creeks, through fields thick with waving grasses and wildflowers, and beneath the daily altar of thunderstorms, I lead the loud and awkward. On the threshold of yet another sweeping valley of meadow and rock, I humbly beg pardon of the silence that has fled before their wall of sound.

But then there’s Jack. I don’t hear much from him. His sounds—or lack of them—say a lot. This is what I hear from him: In times of toil, his breath. In lightness, his giggle. In grandeur, his silence. In hardship, his encouragement and silly jokes.

I stay outside of their circle—the old guy who doles out advice, corrections, and bad jokes. Then, one day, leading the pack on our ascent of a remote peak in the Tetons, Jack guides us into a small sea of ripe wild fruit. Leaves like large, green, luminous plates shroud dense, luscious clusters of fat, wild huckleberries. Waist deep and wading through this abundance, Jack turns a glance over his shoulder, and with a quick, empurpled smile states simply, “God loves us.” I’m not religious, but I feel a current moving in his words: he knows already the blessings of wild places.

It shouldn’t have surprised me, then, to hear something else from Jack on our last night in the wilderness. We circled ourselves to share stories of our climbing, our travel, our fresh caught wild trout, when it occurred to me that these young men were about to return to a world ill-equipped to deal with their noisy bodies. Hormones, energy, potential, ideas . . . all clamouring to life inside of them. Soon to be in the midst of this din, I needed, suddenly, for them to know the texture of a wild silence.

I tell them: “Close your eyes. Keep them closed. We’re going to stay this way for one full minute. NO fidgeting! Get comfortable. And listen. See with your ears for the next minute.”

One minute passes. Two. Their faces, more than anything, hold this silence. Not a stir, not a whisper, not a wavering eyelash. Five precious minutes pass, and finally my voice—guilty—shatters the cusp of wild sounds.

“What did you hear?”

Creek. Trout leap. Rustle of leaves. Elk bugle. Screech of hawk.

The circle comes ‘round. It’s Jack’s turn.

In the midst of these yet-unfolding sounds, Jack closes his eyes again to find his own.

“Simple,” Jack says. “I hear simple.”

He opens his eyes again and smiles, the stain of wild huckleberries on his teeth.

Comments

[Chris Coffin]

Beautiful....

I am an art teacher in High School. I teach photography, computer graphics, multi-media and film appreciation. All of my students are between the ages of 14 and 18. Their worlds are saturated by media, clutter, technology, gidgets, gadgets and short ... fleeting attention spans. I may not have the luxury of sitting at the base of a cliff wall and exposing them to 5 minutes of Creek. Trout leap. Rustle of leaves. Elk bugle and Screech of hawk, but each spring I take my photography students on a walk over the Brooklyn Bridge. Their awe at the expanse, the delicate nature of the cable system coupled with the structure's stout stone foundation places them in a position precariously dangling over the East River that is unlike cyber space, their own insular ipod and x-box 360 inspired media voids.

As we walk, we study the architecture, read poems written about the bridge, stare at the water below, feel the sun on our faces and simply take our time, walking, looking, listening, and shooting. They too, quiet down, put their cel phones away, stop listening to their ipods and lock into the experience of being on the bridge.

Whether in nature or in an urban environment, I think the key is to help the kids dis-engage and get outside; get them to move their bodies, get them to slow down, open their eyes and ears, breathe the simplicity that such experiences provide.

Thanks for the quick read... kids are great, and intrinsically the same, no matter what environment they are in. It simply takes a good teacher to get them to stop, slow down, experience and expand their horizons.

[E. Stanfield]

First off, I'm a kid. I love the outdoors; it is my only home. I want to thank you for taking the time to give teenagers like me the opportunity to feel nature. A lot of people don't get that opportunity & it feels awful to just get enough nature to realize what you are missing but to still have to survive in this society. So many people (teenagers too) don't know how beautiful nature is, and if they had gotten to do this as teenagers they would. So thanks.

[Shane Robinson]

Awesome! I always love the power of children to inspire.
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[Val Gabbitas]

I'm suprized at the comment made "I'm not religious" Does one need to be religious to know that all this beauty and glorious outside world had to come from somewhere ? I don't think religion has anything tho do with it, to know that some supreme being created or put all of this together for our benefit. It's so glorious and beautiful to know that each day we can come across something new that has been provided for us by a loving God. He's there, I know he is. I don't think that all of this extremely organized world of ours just happed from some big explosion. It's too well put together and designed so perfectly that it testifies from it's self that god does love us. I once heard it said that "to believe that this earth was created from the big bang theory is like believing that a tornado can go through a junk yard and create a 747 jetliner." It just didn't happen, there is a God, and we need to seek him out. V

[gary]

I watch my mom die of a bacterial infection last month. It was not glorious or beautiful. Nice going clock maker!

[Mike]

This was a wonderful story. I wish everyone could find inner peace and enjoy alonetime in nature. I especially enjoy standing in the wind and feeling it on my face like I was inside a giant set of lungs - the lungs of the earth. Or getting into the sounds of water moving or of birds singing. Thanks for this respite from world of man.

[Justin]

Awesome. Simply Awesome that you could have the moment with those boys. It is rare in most of our lives to experience those moments where God speaks to us through his beauty and through simple, young people who understand him the best. I agree with a previous post, religion does not have much to do with the beauty and incredible grandeur of this creation. To some of us, creation is a love letter, showing, again, how much God loves us and how spectacular He is. To others, it is just pure, simple, beauty that has no deeper meaning. Either way, this world is incredible and we should each take more time to appricaite it, to seek out times of solitude in it, to protect it, and to encourage those around us to explore our natural blessings.