“Hello, silence my old friend. I’ve come to talk with you again…”
-Paul Simon

I started feeling it in my shoulders and neck. Then my head began pounding. My arms and fingers started aching and the ache continued down my back to my legs and toes. My malaise was easy to diagnose but hard to ignore. Noise. The gut-wrenching boom of teen age car radios. The clamor of traffic and leaf blowers. The constant drone of television and loud conversations at work, conference calls, phone calls, cell phones ringing and buzzing. Noise, noise and more noise. It was only when I had found myself deep in the heart of Joshua Tree Oasis—the most freeing vacation spot on the planet—that I realized even more how starved I was to the sound of silence.

Tijn Touber, senior editor of Ode magazine, expressed it best in an issue dedicated to silence, “To be silent, we need nothing…you give others the space to be silent too, and to be themselves…being silent means more than just holding your tongue. It means listening for the softest, most subtle sound of all—the sound of the soul.” And it was at Joshua Tree Oasis—the hidden escape and ultimate reprieve from thunderous aural intrusion—that I realized how beautiful was the pervasive sound of peace and quiet. And how very much I longed to hear and experience it. Nature has a sound all its own and it has nothing to do with the strident, human-imposed racket we have come to consider normal. No, this sound is soothing, like being rocked to a higher level of awareness. If you really listen you can even hear the muffled thrumming of your heart beating, your breath, your thoughts stilling, your body saying “thank you” as you relax into a sunset made just for you. Joshua Tree Oasis was created for Type A’s to ease into life-rewarding “aaaaahhhhhs”, and Ipod-driven, hyper-overachievers to achieve nothing at all and doing it to perfection.

Author, Katy Butler, in an article in More magazine says, “The average person speaks 16,000 words a day. Tune it all out—and tune in some inner peace.” In the article Ms. Butler highlights the fact that… “Most religions recommend contemplation. Jesus went to the desert, Muhammad hid out in a cave north of Mecca and Buddha sat for hours under a fig tree.” I do believe if these great Masters had access to Joshua Tree Oasis at that time life might have been even kinder and gentler to them on their epic journeys. There is no place like Joshua Tree Oasis to be free from the invasive interruption of the outside world to come home to the often ignored truer world within. Inhaling life in its purest form; hearing only what matters. Where silence is your (healing) friend…

– Cara Wilson-Granat