The rain fell slowly at first, tapping the surface of South Chickamauga Creek in widening circles.
N’nako Kande sat alone on Resurrection Rock at Audubon Acres, watching the ripples spread through the water. She’d come to the preserve on an October morning in 2023 carrying more than she could explain.
So much grief, loss and exhaustion had accumulated that when a friend asked whether she was OK, she found herself unable to answer.
“I can’t talk,” she told her. “I can’t even tell you what’s wrong with me.”
So Kande walked deep into the woods and sat beside the creek.
In the years since leaving West Africa for the United States, Kande had endured the deaths of her father, grandmother and brother. She’d lost other relatives during the pandemic. She’d raised four children far from the village-like support system she grew up with in Côte d’Ivoire (“Ivory Coast” in English).
Like many immigrants, she learned that distance changes a person in ways that are difficult to describe.
“It’s like stretching an elastic band,” she says. “Once it’s stretched beyond a certain point, it never returns to its original shape. Emotionally and psychologically, it’s the same: once you’re stretched, you don’t return to who you were before.”
Yet in Chattanooga, Kande had found one place that felt familiar.
Audubon Acres, with its forested trails and quiet creek, reminded her of the landscapes that formed the backdrop of her childhood.
Her father was born in Kissidougou, Guinea, a forest region where the woods are regarded as sacred. She grew up in the city of Abidjan, home to the Banco Forest, one of the world’s largest urban forests.
In her family, storytelling, music and reverence for the natural world were inseparable parts of life.
“So when I discovered Audubon Acres, it became the only place in Chattanooga where I felt at home,” Kande says.
Over the years, the preserve became more than a favorite place to hike. Kande calls it her “natural intensive care unit” – her NICU. It was where she came when grief felt too heavy, when anxiety tightened its grip and when she needed to remember who she was.
On that rainy morning in 2023, as she listened to the forest around her, an idea arrived. It came as a sequence: five distinct phases that combined silence, movement and reflection. By the time she left the woods, the framework for what would become “The Silent Hour” had taken shape.
Working to get past loss, grief
Since moving to the U.S., Kande had experienced profound loss. The death of her father hit especially hard. While the woods didn’t relieve her grief, they did give her somewhere to carry it.
“My dad’s passing cast a shadow over my root system,” she says, describing the family ties and sense of identity that anchored her. “It made me ask, ‘Who am I now? How do I move forward?’”
When life became difficult, Kande found herself returning to Audubon Acres almost instinctively.
“When things become hard, I need my trees,” she says. “I need my creek.”
The preserve became a place where she could think without interruption and where solitude felt restorative rather than isolating, she adds.
Then an injury forced her to slow down.
“I used to trail run,” she says. “Then I injured myself on the trail. One day, I decided that if I wanted to keep enjoying the forest, I’d have to drag myself there and limp my way through it. So that’s what I did – limp by limp.”
The slower pace changed the way Kande experienced the woods. She spent more time observing, reflecting and creating. Poems emerged, books unfolded and ideas surfaced that might never have appeared had she kept moving.
Over time, Kande realized that creativity had become her way of making sense of difficult experiences.
“People say I’m good at different things, but to me, it’s all one thing,” she says. “It’s all part of my creative body.”
During the pandemic, Kande channeled those instincts into “Mind on Flower: Poems & Photographs,” a collection inspired by nature, gardening and healing.
“I wrote it during COVID, when people were struggling with depression and some of my friends were suicidal,” she says. “That book became part of my healing process.”
Friends eventually gave Kande a nickname that reflected what they saw in her work.
“I have friends who call me ‘The Alchemist’ because I’ve turned the difficult things I’ve lived through into something positive,” she says.
Without realizing it, Kande was building the foundation for something larger than a book or a poem. She was developing a practice that helped her navigate grief, uncertainty and change.
What if someone else needs this?
After envisioning the framework for “The Silent Hour,” Kande shared the idea with Jessica Whitehorn, education director for the Chattanooga Audubon Society.
“I said, ‘If I need it, maybe somebody else needs it, too,’” she recalls.
Encouraged by Whitehorn, Kande drafted a proposal for the Chattanooga Audubon Society. The organization agreed to give the concept a try the following spring.
What began as a response to her own pain soon resonated with others.
Small groups gathered at Audubon Acres and moved quietly through the preserve. There was no pressure to perform, no expectation to socialize and no requirement to accomplish anything. Participants simply spent time observing, reflecting and being present.
The response surprised Kande.
“People would tell me, ‘I didn’t know I needed this,’” she says. “They’d say, ‘My kids are always saying, “Mommy, mommy, mommy.” For once, I was able to sit quietly.’”
One participant signed up for a session on a day when no one else registered. Kande asked if she still wanted to proceed.
“She said, ‘I didn’t come here for the people; I came here for the experience.’”
In the weeks that followed, the woman shared more of her story. One message in particular stayed with Kande: “You saved my life.”
The experience revealed how much people were carrying beneath the surface.
It also showed Kande that what began as a personal practice was becoming a shared one.
A digital sanctuary
The next evolution came from an unexpected source: her younger brother.
As Kande described “The Silent Hour,” he saw possibilities she hadn’t considered.
“My younger brother said, ‘The way you structure it, you could turn this into an app,’” she recalls. “Then he offered to build it, telling me, ‘Just tell me everything you want in it, and I’ll code it for you.’”
The idea forced Kande to think beyond Audubon Acres.
Many people who might benefit from the practice could not easily access a forest. Others lacked transportation, free time or the physical ability to make the journey.
If the goal was to help people create moments of stillness, Kande realized, perhaps the experience needed to travel to them.
The resulting app allows users to move through the same framework that guides the in-person sessions. Some experiences last an hour; others take only a few minutes. Users can journal, practice breathing exercises or move through the complete sequence.
The app includes three approaches: Forest Clarity for outdoor settings, Urban Grounding for busy city environments and Indoor Calm for homes, workplaces and other indoor spaces.
Its design reflects Kande’s belief that peace is not dependent on a particular location.
“You can create a moment of nature anywhere,” she says. “And with it, a moment of quiet.”
Kande understands that modern life is unlikely to become less connected.
“Some people will always be on their phones,” she says. “So the question becomes: How do I bring nature to them? How do I bring my sanctuary to them?”
Crossing the bridge
These days, Kande still comes to Audubon Acres the way she always has.
When she crosses the railroad tracks and enters the preserve, she greets the land as though visiting an old friend.
“There’s a kind of magic here that meets me every time,” she says. “I know there are grander landscapes out there, but for me, it’s the simple things that matter: the quiet, the birds and the feeling of being welcomed by the land.”
“The Silent Hour” begins with a crossing. Participants receive a prompt, listen to a blessing and walk over a bridge into the forest. Symbolically, the crossing marks a transition from one state of mind to another.
In many ways, Kande’s own life has been a series of crossings – from West Africa to the United States, from grief toward healing and from private reflection toward public service.
When she talks about “The Silent Hour,” she rarely describes it as a wellness program. Instead, she speaks about permission.
“I want as many people as possible to give themselves permission to breathe,” she says. “Permission to be still. Permission to remember that most things can wait.”
Today, whether someone joins her beneath the trees at Audubon Acres or opens the “Silent Hour” app on a crowded airport concourse, the invitation remains the same:
“Slow down and breathe,” Kande says. “You are welcome here.”