The silence of the Plains, this great unpeopled landscape of earth and sky, is much like the silence one finds in a monastery, an unfathomable silence that has the power to re-form you… I am conscious of carrying a Plains silence with me into cities…

Kathleen Norris. 1993. Dakota.

I search for this silence. It is harder and harder to find, but Kathleen’s word are true; once you have lived with it, let it soak into your soul, you carry it with you. It is a practiced art, not often valued by youth, to sit for as long as it takes until that silence moves it way through the noise into the soul, where it must be treasured, protected and nurtured in order to reside.