Being Hear
For most of his life, Gordon Hempton has been in pursuit of nature’s myriad and multi-faceted soundscapes as an Emmy-winning acoustic ecologist. During that time, he has become a master of a skill that is inarguably a dying art: listening. In Being Hear he shares insights on the constant and nuanced communications of nature, the alarming extinction of places unaffected by human activity, the way quiet can open our eyes to the larger picture and the benefits of simply paying attention to place. Silence, as he puts it, “is the think tank of the soul.”
“We cannot think originally and be ourselves without quiet. Silence is the think tank of the soul. It is there that deep changes occur.” Gordon Hempton said this as we sat in the dense moss of the Hoh Rainforest in the Olympic National Park. We had been chatting for nearly an hour as dew collected on the tips of evergreen needles. The drops fell from mossy tree limbs thousands of years old, landing softly on the rainforest floor. Despite our muted voices, the silence made us feel as though we were the only animals present for miles.
Nearing the end of our time spent with Gordon in the Olympic National Park, we both felt a deep change inside of us. It was here that our weeklong discussions of sound, silence, listening, and the need to preserve our most naturally silent spaces was self-evident.
It is Gordon’s hope, and ours as well, to encourage an appreciation for a natural silence, that is imperiled by human noise such as airplanes, highways, construction, and other intrusions. This hope is rooted in our desire to protect the few remaining quiet places in the U.S. As Gordon puts it: “when you’re in a quiet place, it becomes obvious. It is the way life was meant to be”.
