The texture of silence

I knew it was snowing by the texture of the silence. 

Lying in my bed, curtains closed, I knew it.

There was a kind of quiet-a softness- that absorbed every sound. I wondered where the little noises of my old house had gone. The snow had soaked them up, like a blanket over my head. 

In late August we went north. On a night in Watson Lake Provincial Park, far from anything, it was so still, so dark, the silence woke me. I listened intently for something. Anything. I waited. But there was nothing. It was the absence of everything.

Silence is rare.

Sometimes I forget we need it.

An absence of the little sounds that call us. The minutiae of life that pulls us away so we forget to listen. For it's in the stillness we can truly hear.

So I await winter. The stillness of the snow. The forgiving blanket that absorbs the noise.