Gently, quietly and humbly o'er the landscape...

        It's the silence that I most appreciate, the deep breathing and the silence. I work on Main Street, at least 40 hours a week,  and have for the last quarter century. I'll grant you, it's one of America's sleepiest Main Streets, but it's still Main Street and I show up at least five or six days a week. People make demands everyday and I get paid for my services.
         I own and operate a bicycle shop in Northern California and I show up year around. My meditations, in fact, my salvation and rejuvenation comes while straddling the saddle of one of my bicycles...gently, quietly and humbly o'er the landscape. It happens during my two mile ride to work and back; or during one of my thirty mile sojourns toward or in the National Park,  located a dozen miles north of my home and business.
         My wife and I have been known to saddle up and ride into the sunset for as long as six months at a time. No real agenda, just a general direction that needs exploring and experiencing silently and under our own power. It really is about the simple living... and the silence.
         No television, no internet, no telephone...just a few simple tools, a tent and a water filter; maybe a good book, probably not, and our bicycles.  No animals to feed or clean up after. No motorcar to fuel or worry about....or to hide from the elements in. If you pick the right roads and regions to explore,  you too will feel the magic of pure air and phenomenal silence.
         It's still out there but most of us are missing it entirely,  because of the static....the static that is a big part of our waking lives...and I fear that this noise continues through the night, in our dreams, which is why we are so unsettled and not at peace with the choices we've made and continue to make, in our noisy, noisy world.