Notes from my Knapsack 7-20-23

Notes from my Knapsack 7-20-23
Jeff Gill

A pause that refreshes in more ways than one
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If you get a chance to take a walk, and it's further than your mailbox, there's something I'd love to invite you to do.

It only really works in the late spring through early fall, five months at most, but right now it's an opportunity waiting for you.

This is a practice that requires just two things: a path that gets you away from homes and traffic, ideally into the edge of a forest or creekside (but a grassy meadow will work, just not a mown lawn), and a place to sit.

You can sit cross-legged on the ground if you're comfortable with that, a log or stump if one's handy, and you can carry a bag chair of one sort or another if that's best.

Here's what I'd love for you to get the chance to experience. Walk your path into a quiet grove, or down alongside the stream bank. Find your place to sit, and do so.

For the rest of this experience, you only have to do one thing, which is I admit very difficult. Just sit still.

Supposedly Pascal said "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone." If it's hard for most of us to do this indoors, outside requires even a bit more of us. You need to keep your swatting at bugs or moving about to a minimum. Yet if you can, your stillness will be met with some new activity around you.

You may not notice it on a trail walk, but nature takes notice of you, and bird song and animal life changes as you pass. And normally, you two-legs person you, you pass on by. If you stop, and sit still, they slowly begin to go back to their business.

First, listen to the birds. You will notice the songs change. That's because they aren't letting each other know on down the line "trouble's coming." As you sit, they go back to chat about . . . whatever birds chat about. Food, weather, the birds and the bees?

Then you might even see some birds start to hop and glide past your position, where you're being still and unthreatening. They perch closer, or fly nearer. The bugs? You may have some that are persistent whether you're moving or not, but some now will be visible you hadn't noticed, dragonflies and butterflies and glossy green beetles. If one lands on you, stay calm.

Sit long enough, and you might hear the chatter of squirrels and chipmunks change. One might skitter past you; other movement in the undergrowth nearby can turn into a groundhog dragging some bedding back to their hole. Shuffle a foot in changing position, they scatter again; wait long enough, and they go back to their usual occupations.

You may think you know a stretch of woods, but you don't know it until you've sat very still in it for fifteen minutes or so. And then you start to realize how little you know about all that's going on around you.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he likes to sit by creeks when he can. Tell him what catches your attention when you sit still at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.