If you have lived your life in a given place, it is only natural that you tune-out a lot of every-day experiences and familiar occurrences. When I was nineteen, I accompanied a city kid from the Midwest on a summer night of partying here in the valley. We entered the first stop of the night—a house party—as daylight fizzled away on the mountains around us.
When we emerged from the house
some hours later, the city kid froze in his tracks there in the darkness. “Wow, look at that,” he said while peering up
at the sky.
“Look at what?” I asked.
“The sky is all stars. Is it always like this?”
“Well, yeah. It’s the sky.”
“That’s not what my sky looks
like,” the city kid remarked.
Something along the same lines
occurred as Desiree and I stood on the back deck chatting. “What is that sound?” she asked during a
break in conversation.
“What sound?” I asked.
Desiree pointed toward the
nearby pine trees.
“Oh, that.” I smiled.
“That’s the sound of wind through the pine trees.”
“It’s pretty loud,” Desiree
noted. “But I like it.”
I listened for a moment. “I like it, too.”
Though the Philippines features
a few pine forests, Desiree has never seen them. I have been listening to wind through the
pines for so long, I normally tune out the sound. I am happy to have Desiree teach me how to pay
attention to everything around me again.
—Mitchell Hegman
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