--- description: Why don’t you try just being quiet? If you can find some silence, maybe you can listen to it. title: ‘An Orchard at the Bottom of a Hill’ By Maurice Manning image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt734ed500ef690efe/698936547cdbac286ed5d815/apple-orchard-north-carolina.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Ideas](/section/ideas/) ## Ideas Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close * [American South](/tag/american-south/) ## American South Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close # An Orchard at the Bottom of a Hill by [Maurice Manning](/author/maurice-manning/) ## Maurice Manning Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Jul 26, 2018 11:05 AM CUT  Apple orchard at sunrise. Blue Ridge Parkway, North Carolina. Apple orchard at sunrise. Blue Ridge Parkway, North Carolina.Jim McKinley—Getty Images by [Maurice Manning](/author/maurice-manning/) ## Maurice Manning Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Jul 26, 2018 11:05 AM CUT Why don’t you try just being quiet? If you can find some silence, maybe you can listen to it. How it works is interesting. I really can’t explain it, but you know it when it’s happening. You realize you’re marveling at apple blossoms and how they’re clustered on the tree and you see the bees meticulously attending every blossom there, and you think the tree is kind of sighing. Such careful beauty in the making. And then you think, it’s really quiet, but I am not alone in this world. That’s how you know it’s happening, there’s something solemn and wonderful in the quiet, a slow and steady ease. Whether the tree is actually sighing is beside the point. It’s better to wonder, you needn’t be precise with quiet, it just becomes another thing. It isn’t a science, it’s an art, like love, or a dog who’s pretty good, asleep in the grass beneath the tree. _Manning, a Kentucky native, is a Pulitzer Prize finalist and author, most recently, of One Man’s Dark_ _This story is part of TIME’s August 6 special issue on the American South. Discover more from the issue_ [_here_](http://time.com/longform/american-south/ "undefined")_._ ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"OpinionNewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/5349535/an-orchard-at-the-bottom-of-a-hill/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/5349535/an-orchard-at-the-bottom-of-a-hill/"},"headline":"An Orchard at the Bottom of a Hill","datePublished":"2018-07-26T11:05:14.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-23T20:58:09.193Z","description":"Previously unpublished work from Southern poets","url":"https://time.com/5349535/an-orchard-at-the-bottom-of-a-hill/","keywords":["American South"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt734ed500ef690efe/698936547cdbac286ed5d815/apple-orchard-north-carolina.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Maurice Manning","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/maurice-manning/"}],"articleSection":"Ideas","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt734ed500ef690efe/698936547cdbac286ed5d815/apple-orchard-north-carolina.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"apple-orchard-north-carolina","caption":"apple-orchard-north-carolina","creditText":"Jim McKinley—Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/ideas/","name":"Ideas"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/american-south/","name":"American South"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/5349535/an-orchard-at-the-bottom-of-a-hill/","name":"An Orchard at the Bottom of a Hill"}}]}] ```