Still, at 10:35am

I sit in Mountain Crest Park as George runs around sniffing the ground, enjoying the unseasonably cool weather we’ve had. With temps in the 70’s, I wear a light jacket to ward off the cool wind and sit with the sun on my back. The noise of the wind drowns out most of the noise around me, muffles the noise of the city, so that I sit in a frozen, still spot where events happen quietly around me, like a TV with the sound on mute.

Far away across the huge park, a jogger runs silently, bobbing up and down with every step. The tops of cars are visible as they pass to the south, but even they are quiet. Only the faint hum of the distant freeway reveals we are in a city.

Trees rustle and move in the wind around me; so do the doggie disposal bags hanging from the dispenser on the fence. My silhouette’s shadow on the cement shows my hair flying in the breeze.

Birds chirp from the tree by me. The gate of the dog park clanks as someone enters. George grunts as he finds a really special scent. Dog tags jingle as a new dog runs by.

Kids play silently in the faraway playground. Hundreds of houses lie in quiet rows on the foothills to the west, and tall red mountains tower above them, watching. A lone mountaintop, taller than the rest, hangs onto its last blanket of snow.

Only a few miles away, people are furiously working, in offices and factories and buses and casinos. Thousands of tourists are oohing and aahing and losing money in loudly clanging slot machines. Above us all, thundering jets crisscross the sky, heading to the East Coast, or West Coast, or Hawaii, Asia, Europe.

But here, in this moment, all is still.