Enjoy the Silence

I have spent most of my adult life in cities. When I do get out of the city, I often have the strange sensation of being in a body that has forgotten how to exist in nature. My civilized feet have forgotten how to walk on uneven ground and the silence hurts my ears. It reminds me that the life I call normal is actually at odds with our true nature.

I often enjoy pondering our ability to adapt to the environment we have made for ourselves. You would think that the manmade world we create would be one where we would flourish, a mixture of the best of nature and the artificial. However, mostly that isn’t how it has ended up. Mostly, it’s a mixture of strip mall, box stores, and paved over rivers. This manmade environment is taking over America in more ways than just visually. Our silent spaces are disappearing.

I have always thought of light and noise pollution as more of a minor annoyance than, you know, actual pollution because they don’t seem to leave a lasting mark. Turn off the light, turn down the noise and they go away. Not so simple. Once the noise and the lights get turned on, it’s pretty hard to turn them off. Just ask the airline industry. The places you can go to avoid a plane flying overhead are very small. I remember reading this is what supposedly made the Unibomber start sending out bombs (that and he had a pretty serious case of the crazies) Here’s a map of current flight patterns over the U.S. Pretty intense.

Audio ecologist Gordon Hempton is trying to reverse noise pollution and one of his biggest challenges is all the air traffic. He says that silence is more than golden, that it is as important today as it was to our ancestors. Hempton says, “When I listen to a naturally silent place and hear nature at its most natural, it is no longer merely sound; it is music. And like all music, good or bad, it affects us deeply.”

One of his major goals is to reclaim the silence in our National Parks by making the airspace empty of planes except for rescue missions and emergencies. He has focused on Olympic National Park in Washington state as it is one of the few parks that has retained most of its silence. By the way, silence is defined as a place that is noise free for at least a 15 minute stretch. As you can see, the bar is already set fairly low. He is also actively trying to conserve three other parks but won’t give out the locations as the observer effect (the act of looking at something will change it) seems particularly likely in this situation.

It seems like for better or worse, it is a natural, human impulse to conquer. Whether it be taking over a territory, converting a group of people, or curing a disease we often feel our input and action helps a situation. We are wired to work. But, Hempton’s work reminds us that less is more. It’s okay to go against instinct. Sit and listen to the silence. Don’t add to it, just be.

If you would like to find a silent space, Hempton suggests going to NASA’s online database and looking at night maps of the US. You can find a nighttime world map here. Look for black areas away from major cities.

Sources:

http://www.newsweek.com/id/232668/page/1

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=896