A walk on the mind side? Experience nature, music and silence in unique hike

Take a hike — not just on some beautiful nature trail, but into your own inner landscape.

That’s the concept of SilentHike, an event scheduled at Lexington’s McConnell Springs Park on Aug. 8. Part of an ongoing series of programs around the country conceived and organized by composer and concert pianist Murray Hidary, SilentHike combines music, the spoken word, hiking, technology and meditation to create an experience in which participants look simultaneously outward and inward.

Hidary will lead the hike, transmitting his commentary and recorded piano compositions — curated on the spot in relation to the natural and topographical features of McConnell Springs — through wireless headphones issued to each participant in an effort to produce a reflective, contemplative effect known in some circles as mindfulness.

“It’s a way of connecting the external landscape with their internal landscape,” says the composer, now on a three-month, 21-city tour. “The music acts as a bridge between the two.”

Many people who’ve joined Hidary’s events — which also include “MindTravel” indoor/outdoor walks at L.A.’s Getty Museum of Art, New York’s Brooklyn Bridge and other sites — report a sensation of falling into a communion with their deeper selves.

“I did travel through the weed-filled gardens of my emotions, re-experiencing feelings that just maybe I buried on purpose but that resurfaced to embolden me to do more than turn on Netflix (research!) that night,” Martha McCully wrote in the Los Angeles Times in June after a bout of MindTraveling. “On the way home from the Getty, I did get cut off on the 405, but then I slept 11 hours.”

The SilentHike at McConnell Springs is free, but people who want to join are asked to reserve spots in advance so that Hidary’s team will know how many earphones to bring.

In a phone interview, Hidary, 47, said that a key aspect of the SilentHikes is the way they allow for an experience that’s at once private and communal. Participants are asked not to speak during the walk — hence its name — until the end, when they gather in a circle and talk briefly, if they choose, about how it felt.

“It’s important for people to be out in nature when they’re listening to the music, as opposed to doing it at home on the couch,” says the composer, whose music reflects influences from traditional Asian flute repertoire to Erik Satie’s “Gymnopédies” to Philip Glass, with whom Hidary studied privately in his native New York City while he was a college student. “You’re having an intimate, alone moment in community with others, which is impossible if you’re doing it on your own.”

If you go: SilentHike

When: Aug. 8, 7-9 p.m.

Where: McConnell Springs Park, 416 Rebmann Lane, Lexington

Admission: Free, but reservations required at eventbrite.com/e/mindtravel-in-lexington-ky-at-mcconnell-springs-park-tickets-65695012551