This week I’ll muse about sounds. A friend introduced me to the research of Gordon Hempton, an acoustic ecologist. He pursues places of silence – spots unmarred by human sounds, filled with nature’s noise only – and mourns their rapid decline.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0xHfFC_6n0

The link is a short videoclip that explains what he does and how difficult it is to find a single square inch of silence in our noisy world. Reading up on him I realized how many people value silence; but it also got me thinking about sounds that actually matter, in everyday life. Admittedly free-associating, here are some sounds that made my life more interesting:

Comfort: the quotidian noises of my German rural childhood evenings – the hoof clopping on the street when the cows were herded home, my mother playing the piano below my bedroom, after a long day. The neighbor’s diesel motor when he went off to night shift. The cooing of turtle doves heard through the open windows while trying to fall asleep.

Exploration: waking up in a dark hospital room from yet another anesthesia, unable to move or feel, trying to decipher if the noises are once again from a respirator or a suction pump to empty the lung cavity from surgery fluids as a teenager.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Irritation: wondering if the scratch of pen on paper would ever be replaced by some wise comment of the unseen shrink behind my back. (Curious, the word shrink. Attributed to Thomas Pynchon from his 1966 book The Crying Lot, in reference to ancient tribal practices of head shrinking of enemies. Not loved in the therapeutic community for obvious reasons. I prefer the German word Seelenklempner – soul plumber – unclogging those emotional drains. But I digress.)

 

Frustration: trying to fall asleep in your hotel room, while the ardor of the amorous couple above has the bed squeaking in F major.

Awe#1: sitting in the absolutely stunning silence of the North Saharan desert.  Awe, that is, until some traveler in urgent need of channeling his inner child brings out the bongo drums.

Awe#2: hiking through the tropical rainforest in Equador around the Rio Napo, in an environment louder than Manhattan at rush hour, animal noises and sounds of water, streaming, banging, dripping, clanging. A veritable symphony.

Surprise: another gift from nature. Climbing to the top of a local mountain, walking on natural gravel that starts to sound like music and seems to be echoed through some strange trick of physics. Can you find the marmot?

 

Pure joy: on a bird photography stint, standing at the right place at the right time, having sandhill cranes crossing over so closely that you can hear the sound their wings make.

And the best of all: the first time you hear your children laughing out loud (or for that matter any time after that!)

Nothing else in the world beats that sound.