The Weight of Silence

I remember a morning in the high country when the fog was so thick it felt like walking through a damp wool blanket. I had stopped to tie my boots near a creek, and for a moment, the world simply ceased to make noise. No birds, no wind, not even the distant hum of a highway. It was a heavy, ancient kind of quiet that makes you realize how much of your life is spent filling the air with unnecessary chatter. We are so afraid of the void that we rush to crowd it with opinions and plans, forgetting that the earth has its own rhythm, one that only reveals itself when we stop demanding that it speak to us. In that stillness, I didn’t feel small; I felt finally, properly, accounted for. It is a rare thing to be in a place that asks nothing of you but your presence. When was the last time you let the silence tell you the truth?

Zahraa Al Hassani has captured this exact feeling in her beautiful image titled The Rocky Mountains. It carries that same heavy, honest stillness I found in the high country. Does this view make you want to stop and listen?