When I was doing Environmental Programs for the Forest Service, I use to have an Interpretive Hike that I added to the program. There were times I had 150 nine year old kids on a 2 1/2 mile trail at one time. No matter how often I said at the beginning of the trail “if you are queit, you will SEE more, HEAR more, LEARN more, ….” I can honestly say, there are very few ways to keep that many people quiet on a trail. So I devised a plan.

About halfway through the hike, at a beautiful spot beside the Ocoee River, I had them all sit down for a “break”. THEN….I pulled out paper and pencils from my backpack and passed them around. The 1st 5 minutes I had no rules other than write down everything you hear. The lists were short and contained nothing but coughs, talking, laughing, etc. Then the rules changed. The goal was, for 15 minutes, no one could speak. They were told to write down everything they heard in that 15 minutes.

Not only did this give me a needed break from all of the noise that many people can bring to a trail, it gave them a chance to SEE through HEARING. It made a difference in each of them. I always noticed the next mile of the hike was much quieter!

It was amazing what some of the kids would write down and the conversations that started when we all read our lists out loud. Discussion about the wind and hearing the results it causes. Trying to determine WHAT kind of bird and not just “bird”. The different sounds the water makes on various rocks in the river.

When we shut our mouth and open our ears, the world can change so drastically for us.

One of my groups doing the exercise described above.