It’s summer, sun high, the sky looks bluer, and bafflingly bigger than you ever thought it could. Only a few solitary clouds break it up, lazily wandering the vast space. The river, in contrast, is hurrying, jumping up then swooping back down, the only constant its dark green hue, the depths that belong to no human, and never will. The trees lining the riverbank reach up, as if trying to catch one of the lonely clouds for shade, or for friendship. The wind sighs through the trees, running its fingers through their branches. Sunlight hitting the ground, resting on the carpets of shaggy spongy moss, tired after its journey. The birds are singing, and the water is harmonising, a soft song with no words you can understand.

Eels rest in their muddy underwater houses, sleep on the bed they share with the river, dreaming of the night. The bees and bugs search for food, bumbling along, dancing to tunes only they can hear. Lizards scuttle out of their holes in search for heat to move the cold blood through their bodies, and birds ride the breeze. Rabbits rushing around their busy lives, eyes darting around, constantly watching for greedy predators. The tired, frayed rope, slung around tree limbs, watching a familiar scene from his permanent roost, and the piles of lichen painted rocks, sit in their stony silence. Weeds and vines claw their way out of the ground, over fallen branches and gravelly ground.

Listen to the heat, the warmth where the sun sizzles your skin. Look at the mud under your feet, squishing through your toes, wrapping itself around them, water around your ankles, the eel as it dreams and bugs preforming their dance. The trees and their ambitious limbs, the breeze that pushes past them, gently grazing by them.

Hear the waters melodies, every creak of every old worn down bough, the rustles of the squatting bushes, waiting for the day they too can reach up to the sky. Listen to the crumble and crack of rocks and gravel sliding down the cliff face, shifted by a nervous rabbit. The silence, the lack of the other voices, other people, whose voices take up space, and noises drown out the silence. You can only hear the trees, the birds, the eels, the water and the bugs. You are the only ones who exist in this space. The only one who exist in this slice of time.

Look. At the way the light glints off the water, the way is highlights and shadows every movement, roll, and twist, every leap and every plummet. The way it creates an ever changing, ever moving, everlasting pattern, that most certainly will never be perceived again by other wide, curious eyes. The way the birds practice their drills, swooping from position to position, squawking out commands.

Sit down. Let your body rest on the ground, let the sun wash over you, let the sounds fill your head, and observe. Watch it all play out in front of you, like a scene in your favourite movie. Watch it unfold, and watch as the sun falls, slowly but surely moving through the sky, a glowing, humming, burning ball, an eye from above overseeing all.

Because before long this moment will pass. The sun will slip behind the hills and the moon will rise in its place. Birds will find their tree top beds once again, lizards back to their holes to wait for a time when the sun is hot on their skin again, the rabbits will be back in their burrows and eels will stop dreaming of the night and join it. Soon this moment will be gone, so do your best to let it soak into your bones and inch into your brain.