The sound pattern makes me think that I traveled back in time, when progress had not yet charged the environment with technological hums and whispers, without the roar of combustion engines, without the acceleration that came with it. I look up and see a white trail crossing the blue sky, the distance makes it a silent movement, it could be the mark of a meteorite but after all it's just a plane that came to blur my illusion.
I traveled to a remote place hoping to take some mental notes that are the preparation to spend a few more days developing the theme "Walking the Land" which is precisely what I'm doing right now.
I'm standing at the edge of the path listening to one of my favorite sounds, the gentle rush of wind through the pine needles, a warm breeze that brings the scent of resin to me, a sound that rises and falls like a breath. My own footsteps trigger other sounds, dry trunks on the ground cracking as they are stepped on, brown grasses bending with a dry rustle, a black-winged beetle climbing one of them and taking off in a hum, cicadas singing in many places and drawing with that sound the depth of the landscape.
The way I go up is not the same way I go down. I don't like to repeat my own footsteps. The earth is connected by infinite paths that have probably existed for a long time, many hikers have certainly passed through here, tiny points on a map far from everything. I can go around almost forever without repeating the same path.
On top of the drawing board are still the drawings I made the last time I was here, now they seem different to me, almost strange, as if they had been made by someone else. Was it time that matured them or was it me who changed? Perhaps it was the journey that changed the traveler. Walking through the land has this quality, of changing the traveler in tune with the places he has passed, perhaps because he had the time, because he was able to enter the essence of the landscape with his senses
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