More High Desert Country

...and I become aware for the first time today of the immense silence in which I am lost. Not a silence so much as a great stillness --- for there are a few sounds: the creak of some bird in a juniper tree, and eddy of wind which passes and fades like a sigh, the ticking of the watch on my wrist --- slight noises which break the sensation of absolute silence but at the same time exaggerate my sense of the surrounding, overwhelming peace. A suspension of time, a continuation of the present." - Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire