Listen to the Silence

 

Lately in the evenings I’ve been sitting on my back steps (I really miss my porch in Fryeburg), contemplating, just being in the moment. The hummers come, the day birds return to their nests and roosts, and then . . . the bats swoop in, and the past few nights the first fireflies are appearing (a bit early I think).

But the human sounds are overwhelming at times. Though you can’t see this place from the road, I live off Route 20 and not far from my driveway is a Citgo station. So there are cars and trucks, and trucks that are always idling or braking. There are leaf blowers and lawn mowers and tractors and the train (though I don’t mind the train). This time of year, sometimes, there are fire works and dirt bikes and very, very loud motorcycles. And chainsaws and banging on metal for whatever reason. In short the human sounds overpower the birds and insects and there is no human silence at all.

 

So I sit and I try not to judge. Just let the sounds in and out like breath. But it’s hard – like breathing the smell of something unpleasant and trying not to “judge” it. In ME/NH everything (where I was) was much, much quieter. It was a blessing for sure.

 

The quote above is in an essay in the summer issue of Orion called “The Age of Noise” and it’s the first one I turned to when the issue arrived in the mail. And that line . . . it just grabbed my heart. How many times in my life have I run and run and run as far away as I could on my feet – as a child and now as an adult – to leave the human world and noise behind? Countless. Always seeking the profound “silence” of no people. I remember sitting outside in the evenings with my mother – maybe by a lake or even in our backyard decades ago. We’d be quietly talking, then she’d stop and the expression on her face would change and she’d say, in a whisper – “Listen to the silence.” I admit as a child I didn’t get it. I thought: “How can you hear silence?” But I certainly get it now. And I’m in awe that I had a mother who knew the beauty of the silence and who communicated it to me, and to others because others remember her saying this.

 

Last week, before I left for my little break visiting “home” – the Mount Washington Valley in Conway, NH – I was sitting out there, trying not to judge the sounds and just let them come and fade away, but it was frustrating. Then I “got” – The silence is within. And understood that living where I do right now with both nature’s voices and human noise very present, is a kind of “school” for me to practice finding the silence within, as it is a necessary tool that will likely come in handy for the future. So for however much longer I am in this location, I am going to practice this and eventually, hopefully, I will be able to carry the silence within myself. This, of course, does not help the myriad species impacted by these destructive 24/7 sounds.

 

Meanwhile, I hope that one of the many shifts we humans make will be to quiet the noises of the machines we have built and that now, rather than serve as our tools that we pull out occasionally, they appear to have taken control. All beings need silence to live, mate, grow, find food, migrate, communicate . . . and our noises are even more disruptive and even deadly to our fellow creatures than they are to us. Science is proving this, and showing how some species are changing their behavior to survive with all our noise. But the potential loss of species due to the impacts of noise is very real. Our noises are pollution and just as toxic as the chemicals our machines spew into the environment.

 

Towards the end of the essay, Sanders asks: “How do you encourage people to notice the things that are no longer singing, that they will never hear again?” How indeed. . .