For my hearing blog, I went to a campground in the Catskills area of upstate New York (well, not specifically for the blog, but two birds with one stone and all). There were many of the sounds you would expect to find in nature. There was the constant babbling of the nearby brook as the water ran quickly over all the various sized rocks that make up its uneven bed. This occupied a great deal of the background noise until moving further away from it. The leaves in the trees were rustling together with the breeze. A few little critters also made their way quickly past in the nearby brush, trying to avoid detection by the “invading” humans.
As it was a campground, there were a few not-so-natural sounds added to the mix. For starters, the sounds of my feet shifting the dirt and kicking the occasional rock on the dirt road as I walked. There was a kid who ran by; his sneakers hitting the ground with thuds mixed with the sweeping crunchy sound of shifting dirt. There was also another kid playing on the bank of the brook, traipsing through the fallen wet leaves and twigs as he walked across from one site to another. The snaps of twigs followed each cut a camper made while illegally trimming the tree at his campsite. A bike passed by on the road. Aside from similar dirt sounds as when the kid ran by, there was the added whirring of the spokes on the rims and the cranking of the flywheel as the rider pedaled. There was a radio in the vicinity playing a collection of Southern rock songs, while nearby someone was using a vacuum or similar sounding device.
The most prominent sound of all, the one you just can’t find in New York City, was overwhelming silence. No background noises, no traffic in the distance, no sirens, no people yelling. Just pure, absolute, silence. All the little sounds I’ve already described are not very loud and hardly intrude on the quiet of the country, if not for the fact that they’re brief and once they’re gone, they’re gone.
14 years ago
