Silence

August 20, 2002

Silence. Sometimes there is no sound at all. The loudest sound is the blood coursing through my ears. I have experienced that in three places. In the mountains after a rain shower was the first. It seemed incredible that in all that vastness of forest, nothing stirred. No animal made a sound. Not a bird sang. Not a squirrel rustled in the leaves nor chattered from the branches. I was awestruck.

The second time I experienced nature in silence was in Wyoming, along Gooseberry Creek. There is an odd place there, where on one side of the road is an irrigated ranch with fields of green, and on the other is a Grand-Canyon-in-miniature. The juxtaposition itself is odd. But further, you can stand on the edge of that mini canyon, stare over its broken panorama trying to take it all in, and hear nothing. Total Silence.

The third place is here, where the usual sounds are made by nature. A spring breeze makes a raspy whisper through the dried grass. On a summer afternoon there’s the whooshing of a dust devil – heard more than seen in its ghostly whirl across the field. When atmospheric conditions are right, I can just catch the sound of a passing truck on the highway a few miles away – though usually not. You might hear the whistling of a Mourning Dove’s wings, the cry of a hawk as it soars, hunting, or the rattle of a migrating Broadtail Hummingbird overhead. If there is water in the stock pond, toads may croak after dark. A pickup truck may drive by. Birds sing. Horses nicker or scuffle. Cows moo. Dogs bark. Crickets chirp. Coyotes yip at sunset. Sometimes at night a fox calls with a raspy bark. Other times – Nothing. All is still.

It’s usually in the evening – at sundown – or at night, that it’s so still. And it’s lovely, then. I sit undisturbed, with not even a buzzing mosquito to annoy me. I watch the paling sunset. The moon comes up, big and full and yellow, from over the hill to the east, as though coming home from a day at work in the field.

The planets come out, then the stars, and finally the cloudy trail of the Milky Way. In all the vastness of the universe, at that moment in time, across all those miles seen in the heavens and across the earth, I hear nothing. Silence. I marvel that across the miles of earth and the lightyears of space, not a sound reaches this place where I stand. Not a breath of air stirs. You can get lost in that silence. In that peace.

Then a horse blows the dust from its nostrils as it grazes in the field, and I come back from my reverie. I feel a kinship with the life close to me – the cows in the barnyard, the horses in the pasture, the dog warming my feet. All bound together by proximity and affection under the vastness of space.

The spell of silence is broken as the life around me makes itself noticed. I feel warm and smile to myself as I turn to go inside. I pause at the doorway to savor another moment. Now it’s the almost silence. But it’s still good. After the stillness, the quiet shuffling of a horse or cow in the barnyard brings the warmth of companionship. I turn again, to light an oil lamp and take down a pan to cook my dinner, and the silence ends.

But it’s still out there, and I’ll go back again.