此時無聲勝有聲

While people often take the advantage of the "three-day weekend" traveling, visiting friends or relatives, we, like many others, prefer staying home to avoid the crowds and traffic.

As a matter of fact, every week, I actually have a "four-day weekend" ever since I "retired" four and a half years ago. I still work at my old workplace two days a week, and we drive to our neighboring town to babysit our grandchildren one weekday a week.

One late morning, during the past "three-day weekend", we did what people considered to be an "easy hike" on the neighborhood hills in the valley, the “Westwood Hills Park”. As it was already rather warm in this late spring, we chose to hike along the shady tree-lined trails.

We strolled through the Eucalyptus Grove. We chatted, talked and climbed up to the top of the hills, where there were ample mature oak trees. Up there, we were more or less exhausted. After all, we realized that we were not young any more. We found a nice spot to rest.

While my wife was sitting on the trunk base of a graceful old oak tree (see photo below), I climbed up to its low-hanging branch, about 4 feet above the ground. I leisurely rested there with my legs freely dangling down.

此時無聲勝有聲, therefore we stopped our chatting. We fell into a comfortable silence. We started to pay attention to the surroundings, enjoy the nature sounds, the pleasing bird’s singing, the soothing breeze that was gently blowing through the trees. Every so often, we would hear some remote human’s whispers, 空山不見人, 但聞人語響. It was an extremely relaxing atmosphere.

At this moment, I left my thoughts roam free and began to reminisce my childhood memory of tree climbing. I did not recall that I had attempted to climb a tree and sit on the tree branch ever since then.

It resembles a brought back childhood experience.


Yeh Tze