The Search for Quiet

I just finished reading Gordon Hempton and John Grossman’s book, One Square Inch of Silence, about Hemptons’ attempt to preserve the quiet of the Hoh rainforest in Olympic National Park, Washington.  Hempton is an Emmy-winning nature recordist (yes, it’s possible!) who has traveled the world seeking not only natural sounds, but quiet landscapes.  Three trips around the world and three decades of recording, and he found what he offers as one of the quietest places on the planet.  Deep in the Hoh rainforest, he memorialized One Square Inch of Silence.

In 2006, he set off on a road trip from the Hoh rainforest to the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. to discuss the issue of noise in our national parks.  He obsessively recorded sound levels along the trip, which included stops in major cities as well as remote locations, and meetings with officials with the National Park’s Natural Sounds Program, acousticians designing better hearing protection, and top officials with both the Park Service and Federal Aviation Administration.  The quiet of the rainforest was only matched by moments of silence between planes in Canyonlands National Park, a brand new symphony hall in Chicago, and the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.

The National Park Service’s Natural Sounds Program was established in 2000 to “protect and restore soundscape resources whenever possible and to prevent unacceptable noise.”  Many visitors to national parks, particularly western parks, expect and indeed crave the quiet of natural soundscapes.  It’s been a battle to get the parks to recognize the importance of sound, and even more effort to try to reduce the effects of noise (unwanted sound) on park visitors.  The program has been chronically underfunded, hampering inventories of what sounds are actually part of each parks soundscape, as well as what measures could be taken to preserve the natural experience of quiet.  Front and center in the fight has been the issue of sightseeing flights over the Grand Canyon.  Tour operators insist they have a right to make a living; backcountry visitors insist they have a right to a wilderness experience free of the incessant drone of small aircraft.  The park has had some luck, aided by congress, in reducing traffic from small planes, but lost the battle on commercial jet over flights.  I distinctly remember taking a flight from Phoenix to Reno several years ago, with a stop in Las Vegas.  The pilot went out of his way to fly over the canyon and made sure all of the passengers knew it.

The NPS and FAA continue the battle about flights over the parks.  The FAA insists it will cost too much in time and fuel to route planes around parks.  Gordon Hempton has tried to protect just one square inch of Olympic National Park from aircraft noise; keeping the tiny space protected also quiets up to 1000 square miles of surrounding country, and raises awareness of our sonic environment.  The park has been more or less sympathetic, depending on the park superintendent.

I’ve spent the last couple of years searching for quiet in the southwest US.  It’s been extremely hard to come by.  Even in Great Basin National Park, near the Nevada-Utah border, planes fly over every 5 minutes during the day.  It’s very hard to get away from the distant roar of car and train traffic.  Don’t get me started on ATVs and modified Harleys.  The number of cars, trains, planes, and other machines continues to increase.  Luckily, many are getting quieter (I’m not so sure about the trains, though), but we still have a long way to go to restore quiet to our most remote wilderness areas.  And here in Tucson, city officials just approved another racetrack at the fairgrounds, and Davis-Monthan Air Force Base is looking to bring in an F-35 fighter wing, with noise 2 times greater than the current F-16s and a noise footprint 8 times larger.  And one thing living and traveling through the desert has taught me is that noise carries farther when there’s nothing to interfere with it, which means the impacts affect not just the people in the surrounding neighborhoods, but also those many miles away.

I have managed to find a couple of quiet places, though.  Kingston Canyon, in central Nevada, is pretty quiet (see The Middle of Nowhere) except for occasional ATV traffic.  I’m also fortunate enough to have a couple of friends who recently retired to an old ranch in central New Mexico, near the Arizona border.  Here, on the high mesas that separate the Mogollon rim from the Colorado Plateau, they are far enough away from the sounds of cars and trains that stepping out of your car in front of their house is like a spa for your ears.  No distant rumble, just the breeze through the grass and a few birds chirping.  Planes fly over, but there are long periods of quiet.  On a visit in mid-May of this year, I was able to record the dawn chorus for 53 minutes without a single plane flying over.  I could have gone longer, but it was time for the dogs to come out and play.

Here’s a snippet of the dawn chorus.  A Northern Mockingbird is doing most of the singing, while an Ash-throated Flycatcher and Western Kingbird try to sneak in a few notes.  An Eastern Meadowlark can be heard in the background.

Recording notes:  Recorded with Sony PCM-M10 and Audio-Technica AT-2022 with FEL SK 3.5 preamp.  Recording subject to amplification.

Photo of Olympic National Park’s Hoh Rain Forest by Sualkdd, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=50958577. 

References:

Hempton, G. and J. Grossman. 2009. One square inch of silence.  One man’s search for natural silence in a noisy world.  Free Press, NYC.