I was floating on a peddle boat on a busy summer day at the Chippewa Creek Conservation Area, which was about 20 minutes by bike from our house on Corwin Crescent in Niagara Falls. It was perhaps 1975 and I was 13. 

The current of the creek seemed frighteningly strong to me where it fed into the Niagara River just a hundred feet away. The Falls itself, a thundering roar, was just a mile downstream, and it’s towering plume filled the sky. 

But my boat nudged under the boughs of some trees in a still eddy and all sound suddenly fell away. I leaned over the edge of the boat and looked down at the sky below me, reflected by the surface of the calm water. Leaves floated into my vision and invisible droplets of sap fell on the surface. It was so quiet, I could hear my breath.