Favorite Sounds
Photo by Chuck Hoffman © Genesis+Art
Madison, Wisconsin
I was listening to a podcast this morning and people were being asked, “What is your favorite sound?” There were lots of great answers. “Laughing babies,” made me chuckle at the very thought. “The sound of rain,” and “Waves on the shore of the ocean,” were some other responses. It got me thinking about living in the remote wilderness of the Cascade Mountains at Holden Village and sounds that were unique to my experience there. It also got me considering how the quiet stretched out long enough in that secluded place to hear the notes of small things. In particular, all the different sounds animals and birds make, and that trees and plants too, make sounds.
While visiting South Tacoma on Puget Sound a while ago, I noticed that the city and traffic was so loud that I could hardly hear the birds on the fence next to me. I could see the lapping of the water on the shore across the street, but not hear it. I could not hear the rustling of the bushes in the breeze. I watched a bee at work in a flower and I could not hear him. I wondered what else I couldn’t hear. It seemed like I should be able to hear a boat now and then on the water. I had no problem hearing the trains, but they headed off to their destinations and the cars and motorcycles took over the loud when they rumbled out of range. The bossy noise of human daily existence overpowered nature in nearly every instance.
That podcast started me thinking about the sounds I missed from the wilderness, or more specifically, the sounds vibrating against a background of profound silence that the remote backcountry and the Village offered. I have had the joy and privilege to experience silence so deep I could hear snowflakes falling, which can be pretty loud if they are the only things making noise. It’s nice when only a few flakes are falling and you can hear them drop one by one on your coat. I remember hearing a snowflake for the first time. Chuck and I were walking west past the footbridge and we stopped for a minute to look up at the stars. I heard this slight ticking. “What is that?” I said. “What?” Chuck answered back. “That!” I said again. “Oh,” he replied, “I think that’s a snowflake.” We listened for a while, amazed that we could hear the falling of each flake.
I’ve learned what sounds a ground squirrel makes when he is calling out a warning, which is different from the sound he makes when a villager has set his or her ice cream on the ground. When a fawn is looking for her mother, she makes a different sound than she makes at play. Fire sounds different depending on where it is. A forest fire sounds very different from a fire in Dante when you are stoking that furnace. A campfire sounds different in a pit in the woods, than the sound it makes in your wood-burning stove.
I’ve learned what water sounds like running under the snow versus under the ground, which is different than a flowing mud slide, which is completely different than a small rivulet making its way downhill. Water running into a basement makes different sounds depending on the season. I would have never noticed most of these sounds had there not been great amounts of silence between falling flakes, flowing water or critters in conversation.
Not only did the wilds around Holden Village offer the silence in which to observe and listen, but it also offered sounds that were unique to my experience living there. When a roof-a-lanche (which is multiple feet of snow sliding off a roof) let loose in Chalet 6 for the first time it scared the daylights out of me! I think I spent my whole first year saying, “What the hell is that?” “Oh, that’s an avalanche in Big Creek,” or, “That’s a NutHatch,” or, “That’s a squirrel throwing pine cones out of the tree.”
Of course there were sounds that terrified me that were designed to scare me. They were sounds full of warning or trouble, and signaled for my full attention. The “wail,” in particular. I still get a shot of adrenaline when I hear a siren that sounds like our village fire alarm. I am still waiting for the day that does not scare me. The sound of the pager going off signaling an emergency phone call can be worrisome. A mother mule deer makes a terrible heartbreaking sound when a bear eats her fawn. The sound of a tree falling is particularly frightening.
And so for nearly 6 years I listened to the sounds of wilderness and Holden. You might think these days I’d miss the bell or vespers, or singing or laughing. You might think my favorite sounds would be people calling my name, the conversations with grit, or the sound of musicians with so much talent that a heart can skip beats. I miss those sounds too. But it’s the sounds that demand silence and require something of me that I long for and miss most.
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