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...Yawning, walking thigh-deep through the ground mist towards the house, you wonder vaguely if you are still asleep and at the same time not asleep, still dreaming and at the same time not dreaming. Couldn't it be? This swathed and muffled ground is like a sleep; this furry silence is Iike a dream silence. The air is so still. The foxes aren't barking in the woods. The crows aren't calling. You can see no ducks flying the river. You cannot hear the morning breeze fingering the buckthorn leaves. It is very still. Except for that soft, delicious, wet hissing.......In a reverie of movement you dip your hand into the nail keg and remove a few nails. You place the nails between your teeth and take up your hammer and go along the wall you were working on, half wondering if the blow of the hammer will be able to penetrate this cushioning silence or be stolen away by the fog and drowned in the river. You notice you are walking on tiptoe....
Ken Kesey, Sometimes a Great Notion, New York, 1964, p. 22.
TIME: mid-20th c.
PLACE: U.S.A.
CIRCUMSTANCE: a logger talks of the silence
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