evening stillness

The rain had finally stopped and though it was late in the day, I felt to go for a walk. I am in Devon, in the Dartmoor National Park, and hereabouts the roads are narrow, single track lanes, sunken, with high hedges on either side. So I set out to walk through the lanes for an hour or so.

To begin with, I didn't notice how quiet it was, how peaceful. My mind was busy, as it all too often is, mulling over yesterdays, dreaming of tomorrows, thinking about things that don't need to be thought about. But as I walked, something of the surrounding atmosphere was seeping into me. And then, halfway round this walk, I came to a little five-bar gate: an entry into a field, but an old one, long disused, half overgrown, a beautiful little wooden gate, too narrow for modern farm machinery, and rather forgotten by the farmer. But still this gate opened up the vista: the high Dartmoor landscape stretched away.

And it was there that, finally, the stillness of the evening reached my heart. And my thoughts simply stopped. The stillness had entered me. I had become part of the stillness. And with that my whole being relaxed: physically, mentally, emotionally, and above all spiritually.

This evening stillness has a tremendous quality, after we humans have finished our rushing around for the day, when our vehicles have fallen silent, at least for another night. The birds were still singing, and the odd sheep could be heard in the distance. But those sounds of nature did not detract at all from this stillness. Indeed they made the stillness deeper. Paradoxically, they added to the silence.

And this stillness was a great reminder to me, of the way to be, when we stop doing and thinking and moving around, when we allow our agitation to subside. Here, in this stillness, we rediscover who we really are, and how we relate to existence.

This timely reminder was the great gift that I received at that old five-bar gate, gazing out across Dartmoor, and feeling the evening stillness.