The Sound of Silence: On the Sidewalk Today

What gets me about the wilderness, besides the commonness of beauty, is the sound of silence. Sometimes, at altitude, my ears hurt from the lack of sound. We’re talking nine, ten or eleven thousand feet and a few days in, up and in, a different atmosphere. It’s like my ears do a reset … they say to me, “This is what silence actually sounds like.”

Nowadays, there’s nothing but noise outside our morning windows in this 75-year-old house, here in this overrun part of North Texas. The muzak of existence here is traffic noise, and when the air gets thinner and cooler, and when the wind gets just wrong, that noise pounds through the windows starting about five in the morning, coming from I35E almost a mile away, and decrescendos about noon and holds before skyrocketing again at about four in the afternoon. Jets flying over, in their new flight paths over Denton, punctuate the soundscape throughout the day now. This is where I am this morning.

Where Are You?

Where are you these days my friends and readers? Is it where you want to be, or where you have to be? If you’re lucky, as I am from time to time, maybe you found this Monday Morning Sidewalk column in a place where you want to be.

I did send out that password reset to this website, so if you are registered here at this site, you will have to reset that today. I think the upside is that only registered users can comment? There is another system in place to be notified about new stories coming from this site, and I think it comes from that annoying popup that shows up when you come to this site? I guess as an internet peddler I should know the answer to that!

The Grand Tour and the Petite Lake

Two videos of smaller scale came about from my trip to Tomball, Texas, for a few days. One is the private neighborhood pond, they call a lake, and the other is a run into Houston to see the new location for Bayou City Angler. I ran into an old friend, still running BCA, and he let me run through the store (not literally) with a camera and highlight their new look.

The weekend was filled with volunteering to help students and do the photography and video for a NCTC fly fishing intro class – a few counties away from here. Yes, the silence there was pretty great, even if temporary. But with a working weekend behind this Monday morning, I am looking forward to catching my breath, making a few fly line mats to ship, making a few videos and squeezing in a trip to the Blue River as well. It will be the first trip of the season to the Blue River, and I am imagining some grand plans for people who tune in to the Texas Fly Caster YouTube Channel, some things that have never been done there. But, Oklahoma may have different ideas on that.

This coming weekend potentially bookends the week with more work. There’s an art show, in Poetry, Texas, and I’ve been invited to bring some of my finely tuned gongs to the show. A little bit of chop, grind and weld will be in the air this week as well. See! I do make noise to add to the local landscape, but nobody really hears it anymore. I tend to make more noise here, with words, than I do grinding and welding.

Thanks for reading. Let your heart not be troubled if you are attempting to comment below, and it does not work. I think that means you have to reset that password registration here. For a hundred or so of you, you won’t feel a thing when you are deleted from here locally. I think your safest bet is to hit that annoying PoPup and register there for notifications on new stories. You tell me, and we both will know!