The Sound of a Walk

Notes on a creek, a crack in the sky, the Moon, and an owl.

It is Saturday morning. Early. The birds are full force. With the windows and balcony door open it’s actually loud. Fellas… it’s early.

They start very early. I didn’t check the initial time they woke me up, but it must have been around 4:30. I remind myself it’s the sound of nature. I pull a pillow over my head and fall back asleep until around 7. Now the sun is cresting the horizon and shoots warm colors across the valley, into our room, reflects off our closet wall. I get up.

Once downstairs I start a fire and make hot water. I stretch my arms a little waiting for the water, and feel the fibers in my body waking up. I sit first with a pen and paper and scribble out several pages before moving over here to my laptop. My mind likes words in the morning.

This week flew bye. I’d mapped out on a Tuesday evening walk what I was going to write on Substack this week. On the walk I planned on getting home and writing it all out, but then something on the walk happened and delayed me by a couple hours which was enough to not only throw off the whole plan, but to erase from my mind most of what I’d planned on walking. I’m going to see what happens when I try to reconstruct it here.

It was evening. Getting dark. With the doors of the house open the air feels thick with water, which it clearly is. The colors are mostly heavy too. I’d been in the house much of the day working, so I grabbed my camera by habit, called Acre, and set out into the rain with my camera zipped safely inside my coat. I didn’t plan on using it, but maybe if a big bird or cat appeared down by the creek… I always hope.

Leaving the house I had no phone, no headphones, but still a song in my head. Lord Huron, one of his slow kind of dream like songs. Pleasant, but I wanted quiet. It’s funny how things get in our heads this way. Play on repeat. Play in the background without us often even realizing it. Filling a part of our brain space that we aren’t even necessarily conscious of.

Wanting quiet I did what I do when I go on long runs. I focus in on my breathing. And when I get to the field I play fetch with Acre. Fetch with a dog is often just as good for clearing the human mind as it is helping the dog get out energy. After several minutes and a clearly panting dog we continue down to the creek. Now my brain is clear I notice. I’m thinking mostly about the sounds. My footsteps in the gravel. The sound of the rain on my hood. I pass two figures in the fading light, but after that there is no one. The creek is rushing high. Mid-high anyway. It will gain several more feet before the end of spring, and will change the dynamic of all the logs that settled in last springs run off. Spring is when the water changes the shape of the river. It takes down trees and banks. It moves deadwood. It washes out the annual sediments. And it is starting to happen right now. The sound is loud once you near it.

We walk down. Acre gets a drink and I pull out my camera for a few photos. A short video. I’ll probably never do anything with it. It’s mostly dark. But there is a Canadian goose over there and it would be neat to get a photo if it takes flight. But the goose could care less about us, and swims in his pool several minutes before I give up. I lean down, splash a little water on my face as is habit every time I come to the creek. Something about splashing cold fresh water on the face, it wakes me up. I always assume something almost most spiritually important about it, perhaps my baptist upbringing poking up its head. But it’s true. When you put your body in cold water, something good happens. It wakes up parts of your mind that otherwise sit contently dormant, and even just a splash, getting the hands and face and sometimes neck…

We continue walking. My mind now had an idea it wanted to write. It had something to do with sound, and often I have the ability to recall thought streams like the one I was having, but for some reason the one I was having that night is lost. We walked up the hill. At the top of the hill is when I noticed something different. Something unexpected. The rain was still lightly falling with its wonderful tapping sound on my hood. But light enough I pulled by hood back and let it fall on my face and head. But as we walked up further we could see (Acre saw it too?) that the sky in the west had broken. Just over the horizon. Far enough west that we couldn’t have seen it from the bottom of the hill. By now I’d already walked further than I had planned and was torn. Part of me very much wanted to get back and put the words I’d been thinking about on page, but the part of me with my camera in hand wasn’t going to allow it. The light I’d been craving all day… There it was for the taking. The seeing. So we went towards it, with no objection from Acre.

It was beautiful. We paused for several minutes watching the sky darken but with this brilliant pocket of brightness shining through beneath the heavy clouds and above the horizon.

Eventually I turned around and walked down the hill, Acre running ahead of me, back towards the creek. As we neared the creek trail it was rather dark. I could still make out shapes, but the colors had faded for the night. And a new sound emerged. Now an owl. And there he was, sitting on an electric pole. A regal, quite tall owl. Here is where I wish I was a bird person. I should be. I’ve lived around birds enough I should know their variety, but I don’t. I think this was a great horned owl, but could easily stand corrected. If you know from this picture, I’d love for you to tell me.

We slowly walked towards it. My mind still at this point had the idea, had the words. Was ready to write them. But this owl was definitely going to slow my return home. I sat and listened to him for a few minutes. Got a few still pictures as I got closer. I knew if I went too close he would eventually fly off. I see owls enough down here to know that they don’t love to be stood below. So after firing off some photos I decided to switch settings to video. A simple button, but I wanted slow motion, and that required a quick dive into the camera settings. And while I’m familiar enough with this camera at this point to be able to make rather quick changes, I wasn’t quick enough. When I looked back up, the ghost had vanished. Silently. I hadn’t heard so much as a single wing flap. Moments later I could hear him in the trees over the creek, calling once again.

Missed moment. This sort of thing can drive me a little crazy, but I reminded myself, I had things to write. I had enjoyed this owl and even gotten a few photos. I need not ask more. So I continued. The rain had quit by this point and the silence of the night, which was anything but quiet, was rich and deep in the dark. When the eyes are restricted, the ears take over. The creek running heavy and lush. Another owl on up ahead somewhere near the horse ranch. Maybe I’d get a sight of that one.

I turned over to see where the faded colors of the crack in the sky had been, and the clouds were moving towards me and the opening was widening in clarity. A few stars were even showing through. And there it was. The moon in a way you almost never see it. It was a crescent but it was full. A bright sliver, a very, very small sliver was lit, but I could see the entire moon in clarity. Sitting just over the horizon. My mind goes wild for this sort of stuff. The moon is not only beautiful, but a very fun challenge to photograph. I pulled the camera out and snapped off a few quick photos, knowing full well I did not have the lens I wanted. This is why I often carry a camera bag. Options. But it’s also fun to just make do and try to make the best photos possible with the simplicity of a single thing. The lack of options can often spur a better photograph. So I took a few, but I knew my mind was forming a new plan. And this is what is interesting about the mind. There are different parts of it. One part may be thinking one thing, while the other is formulating something different. One part of my mind very much wanted to just get home and write the ideas I’d been thinking about, but the other knew I was going to rush home and grab a different camera lens so I could hurry back and try to catch this quite unique scene. The second part won. I’m a sucker for the moon and the night sky.

I ran home. I had neither the shoes or clothing optimal for a fast run home, but I knew that a moon that close over the horizon would not be lingering long. Acre thought it very exciting when I took off at full steam. We ran down the trail, across the field, and down the dark street. I scurried in the house, swapped by camera lens, and hopped on my back into the darkness, no time for lights, and headed back up the trail. The moon had already sunk far enough that I had to go further up the trail to see it where the horizon was lower. But there it was. Panting, a little sweaty, I slowed my heart rate as best I could. In the rush I’d neglected to think to get my tripod, which at this point was necessary, but it was too late. There was no way it would still be visible in the time it would take to go get it. So I made due with what I had. A fence post which if utilized just properly so would not shock me.

I stayed out in the dark moving slightly up and down the creek for various angles until the moon had gone. Then slowly walked my bike back down the trail, now too dark to want to try to navigate with a camera. And besides, the night sounds were amazing. The owls now surrounded me. Calls went back and forth up and down and back and forth across the creek. The night is their realm. The creek seemed to have picked up steam, though I think it was just the darkness making it seem so.

What had been a quiet house when I got home had come to life. Ella and Simon were both in the living room. Acre was dancing around, a little annoyed with me for bringing him back, and darting immediately back out without him. I told myself I’d write the idea in the morning. I’d remember it. It was based on the sounds of a walk. The evolution of the mind as the continuation and progression of sounds were realized and discovered. But in the morning the world had other plans. Work things hit fast. My typical 2-3 pages of journal writing didn’t even happen. Suddenly it was Thursday. The idea was all but gone. I thought a walk would recreate it but it didn’t. By Friday I’d given up on that idea. A new one would come. But Friday got away from me too.

So finally, a few minutes, several in fact, and here I am. The story of the a walk, with an owl and the moon. If you know what that owl is, please let me know.