Then there’s the silence of tough summer afternoon walks across the flank of a mountain, stony paths, exposed to an uncompromising sun. Blinding, min… - Frédéric Gros

But above all, silence is the dissipation of our language. ... In the silence of a walk, when you end up losing the use of words because by then you are doing nothing but walk, ... in that silence you hear better, because you are finally hearing what has no vocation to be retranslated, recoded, reformatted.

But walking causes absorption. Walking interminably, taking in through your pores the height of the mountains when you are confronting them at length, breathing in the shape of the hills for hours at a time during a slow descent. The body becomes steeped in the earth it treads. And thus, gradually, it stops being in the landscape: it becomes the landscape. That doesn’t have to mean dissolution, as if the walker were fading away to become a mere inflection, a footnote. It’s more a flashing moment: sudden flame, time catching fire. And here, the feeling of eternity is all at once that vibration between presences. Eternity, here, in a spark.

On ne fait rien en marchant, rien que marcher. Mais de n’avoir rien à faire que marcher permet de retrouver le pur sentiment d’être, de redécouvrir la simple joie d’exister, celle qui fait toute l’enfance. Ainsi la marche, en nous délestant, en nous arrachant à l’obsession du faire, nous permet d’à nouveau rencontrer cette éternité enfantine. Je veux dire que marcher, c’est un jeu d’enfant. S’émerveiller du jour qu’il fait, de l’éclat du soleil, de la grandeur des arbres, du bleu du ciel. Je n’ai besoin pour cela d’aucune expérience, d’aucune compétence.