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Hey Friends,

Just wanted to drop in and let you know I’m taking a bit of R&R for the next few days. Summer starts early here in Nebraska, so the boys and I are off drinking in some new sights, scents and sounds. I’m stepping away from the computer – alleluia! — so I’ll see you on the other side (next week sometime).

Peace.

I picked up the magazine from my neighbor Karna’s table. “Shhhhhh…Everything you always wanted to know about peace and quiet: The Silence Issue,” the cover headline read.

Well, yeah, sign me up for silence, thank you very much.

I read the whole issue of Ode magazine cover to cover before I realized it was dated July/August 2008; but in the end, that didn’t matter – the content was timeless.

Like the story about “acoustic ecologist” Gordon Hempton (listen to a terrific podcast with Hempton here), an Emmy Award-winning documentary sound recordist who cares very deeply about quiet – so deeply, in fact, that he’s made protecting quiet his mission on Earth.

Hempton, who’s been called “America’s foremost guru of quiet” by USA Today, claims that there are less than 10 naturally quiet places left in the United States and zero in Europe. He’s identified the quietest place in America as a spot in Olympic National Park’s Hoh Rain Forest in Washington – a place he calls One Square Inch.  Hempton believes in soundscape management – that is, protecting our wild places from the intrusion of manmade noise.

When was the last time you were surrounded by a silence uninterrupted by manmade noise? When was the last time you took the time to be quiet?

When was the last time you heard not Twitter chirps and cell phone beeps and garbage trucks, the swish of the dishwasher, rumble of the dryer, scream of the jet overhead? But instead, the taptaptap of the downy woodpecker, the hush of wind in your ears, the gurgle of water over river rocks, the click of a beetle’s wings?

When was the last time you heard only that and nothing else?

Ordinarily I’d tell you I couldn’t remember the last time I experienced that kind of quiet. But recently I enjoyed exactly that – a rare moment of absolute, natural quiet, untainted by manmade sound.

Spotting the emerald green, I stepped off the dirt path, skirted around wizened trunks and spiny prickly pear cactus, and jogged down the matted grass toward the bank.

I heard it first – a splash, then a flurry of wings thrumming the still air. A second later I glimpsed the bird itself, magnificent and regal, rising above the malachite water – a Great Blue Heron, its wings dipped in steel, neck tucked tight.

He was quick, too quick for my camera, so I simply watched, one hand shielding my eyes from the glare, as he soared around the bend and out of sight, spindly legs held straight under his elegant wingspan.

I sat on pockmarked rock on the bank of the Frio River, my back to the skyscraping canyon wall. The sun warmed the top of my head, and the cool wind dried the sweat to salt on my skin. Chin on my knees, I stared at the water, at its emerald green, at the rock shelves suspended eerily like eons-old ghosts below the glittering surface.

I listened to the unfamiliar call of a bird, piercing and shrill, hidden in the scrub brush on the opposite bank. The water flowed silently, occasionally meeting the cave-like rock of the bank with a hollow gloink, like the sea beneath a wooden pier.

I waited, still, for the Great Blue Heron to return. But even when I knew he wouldn’t reappear, I sat longer, listening to the Earth beat in perfect quiet.

Living this one in real time.

Happy weekend, happy almost-February, friends. xo

Well I just have to say it: you all are the very best readers any writer could ask for. On this day of rejoicing and celebration, I offer you my heartfelt thanks for coming alongside me on this wild writing journey. Thank you for reading, for encouraging, for making me smile. Thank you for making it all worth it. Today and every day, you are a GIFT to me!