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Desperately Seeking Silence

A search for the quiet I was once acquainted with and where the journey took me.

By Julie BarnesPublished 3 years ago 4 min read
Top Story - April 2021
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Growing up in rural Michigan, then moving to Florida, the amount of background noise is one of the things that I have never been able to adjust to.

As a young girl, I would wander around my grandparent’s farm, or go for a hike through the marsh and woods near my home. I was surrounded, not by silence, but by the sounds of the natural world. Red-winged blackbirds trilling on the edges of the marsh, crows cawing from the tops of the trees, leaves rustling in the wind, rarely hearing a car.

In Florida, I discovered that I could always hear the sounds of churning and burning: an internal combustion engine.

On the beach, there was the sound of boats in front of me and cars behind me. Hiking along the Kissimmee River, airboats were up and down the river throughout the day and most of the night, planes flew overhead, and the occasional jet fighter from a nearby air force base.

I continued to search for the same quiet I learned to love as a girl.

On one trip, I found canoeing the Okaloosa River wasn’t so bad during the day--the stretch that I chose was very marshy and had no bridges... So there was very little development--very little noise.

But that silence disappeared at night. I found an island along one of the channels and decided to camp there since high land was rare. Then, as the moon rose, so did the hum of other humans. Every few hours at night, an airboat with an unmuffled engine would make a pitstop. All sleep stopped until they zipped out.

I decided to encourage others to join in my hunt.

I taught at a community college for a number of years, and for a while, I would take interested students backpacking along parts of the Florida Trail. For many, it was a brand new experience. While they had been camping before, few of them had ever spent days without electricity, running water, and more importantly, their cell phones. While talking on the phone to a friend, listening to podcasts, or rocking to your playlist might be something fun for them, they needed to learn to listen to the chattering of squirrels, the call of sandhill cranes, or the grunting of a bull alligator.

Life of a different style and a different pace. Boredom only came to those without the patience to wait for Nature’s noise to come to them.

Accepting the hum of electricity and people.

We can never return to pre-industrial life, nor would many people want to. The world is too developed for that, and most of the population is too accustomed to the comforts of all things mechanized.

But that doesn’t mean that people still can’t find peace and solitude.

This is where the paradox of nature and noise meet.

In order to experience the quiet of the natural world, there has to be some development. People can enjoy a pristine view of a mountain valley without having a road or trail that will take them there. And that very road or trail that allows them to view things from on high, makes the view from the peak less than pristine.

Somehow we must find a balance between development and nature. While the view of Pikes Peak is breathtaking, how many people would be able to view it if there was no road to take them there? Many able-bodied people could make the trek, but anyone with impaired mobility would never get to see the view from the top.

People can enjoy nature without affecting it.

Even if we try to “Leave nothing but footprints, take nothing by photographs,” we will still have some effect on the environment around us. How much damage is done by hikers, careful as they may be, just walking along a trail by the hundreds, even thousands?

Many people feel that it is wrong to use the natural resources in our national parks and forests, but how many of them are willing to do without the oil, wood, and hydroelectric power that are taken from them? Our lifestyles, from the food we eat to the vehicle we drove to the home where we live affect the peace and quiet that we can enjoy in nature. It is all connected so all our actions affect it as well.

Patrick McManus, who grew up in Idaho and spent most of his life enjoying the outdoors or writing about it, said, “I have seen many meadows turn into shopping centers, but never seen a shopping center turn into a meadow.”

And that is very true. Development marches forward, not backward. But there is still hope.

Back in the 1920s, Marjory Kinnan Rawlings, the author of The Yearling and Cross Creek, moved to Cross Creek, Florida. She bought land with thriving orange and pecan trees. After she passed away, she left her estate to the University of Florida. They then sold it to the State of Florida for a state park.

In Cross Creek, Rawlings tells the reader that her grove was built from an oak hammock. And she predicts that once she is gone, it will return to oak hammock. If one were to go visit the park at Cross Creek today, as you leave the parking lot, you will see her quote. And you will find that her prediction came true--it has returned to oak hammock, with live oak, palmetto, and the occasional orange tree to remind you of the orange grove days.

And if you listen carefully, you will hear the rustle of the wind through the leaves. You will hear the murmur of crickets and the creaking of branches. These whispers of Mother Nature are a reminder. A reminder that we need to work hard to preserve nature and Mother Nature’s unique noises. She is shy and moves slowly, but her voice can return.

Nature
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About the Creator

Julie Barnes

Learning to laugh at life while feeding a family of five. Finding unique, unusual recipes on a budget.

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