One Square Inch

 

I pick up the magazine from Karna’s table. “Shhhhhh…Everything you always wanted to know about peace and quiet: The Silence Issue,” the cover headline reads.

Well, yeah, sign me up for silence, thank you very much.

I read the whole issue of Ode magazine cover to cover before I realize it’s dated July/August 2008; but in the end, that doesn’t matter – the content is timeless.

Like the story about “acoustic ecologist” Gordon Hempton, an Emmy Award-winning documentary sound recordist who cares very deeply about quiet – so deeply, in fact, that he’s made protecting quiet his mission on Earth.

Hempton, who’s been called “America’s foremost guru of quiet” by USA Today, claims that there are less than 10 naturally quiet places left in the United States and zero in Europe. He’s identified the quietest place in America as a spot in Olympic National Park’s Hoh Rain Forest in Washington – a place he calls One Square Inch.  Hempton believes in soundscape management – that is, protecting our wild places from the intrusion of manmade noise.

When’s the last time you were surrounded by a silence uninterrupted by manmade noise?

When’s the last time you heard not Twitter chirps and cell phone beeps and garbage trucks, the swish of the dishwasher, rumble of the dryer, scream of the jet overhead…but the taptaptap of the downy woodpecker, the hush of wind in your ears, the gurgle of water over river rocks, the click of a beetle’s wings?

When's the last time you heard only that, nothing else?

Ordinarily I’d tell you I couldn’t remember the last time I experienced that kind of quiet. But two weeks ago I enjoyed exactly that – a rare moment of absolute, natural quiet, untainted by manmade sound.

Spotting the emerald green, I stepped off the dirt path, skirting around wizened trunks and spiny prickly pear cactus, and jogged down the matted grass toward the bank.

 

 

 

I heard it first – a splash, then a flurry of wings thrumming the still air. A second later I glimpsed the bird itself, magnificent and regal, rising above the malachite water – a Great Blue Heron, its wings dipped in steel, neck tucked tight.

He was quick, too quick for my camera, so I simply watched, one hand shielding my eyes from the glare, as he soared around the bend and out of sight, spindly legs held straight under his elegant wingspan.

I sat on pockmarked rock on the bank of the Frio River, my back to the skyscraping canyon wall. The sun warmed the top of my head, and the cool wind dried the sweat to salt on my skin. Chin on my knees, I stared at the water, at its emerald green, at the rock shelves suspended eerily like eons-old ghosts below the glittering surface.

I listened to the unfamiliar call of a bird, piercing and shrill, hidden in the scrub brush on the opposite bank. The water flowed silently, occasionally meeting the cave-like rock of the bank with a hollow gloink, like the sea beneath a wooden pier.

I waited, still, for the Great Blue Heron to return. But even when I knew he wouldn't reappear, I sat longer, listening to the Earth beat in perfect quiet.

When's the last time you experienced one square inch of silence? Will you share that moment with us in the comments here?

{And if you have time, do watch this. I love this guy's passion, and I truly believe his work is his ministry}:



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