Sounds of silence
”
The sound of the surf was heard by many today.
”
“The sound of the surf was heard by many today.”
While it was a rare enough event to merit a line or two in the newspaper, that notation used to appear with some regularity in the Gilroy and Hollister newspapers of a century ago. As incredible as it seems today, crashing waves in Monterey Bay were audible when conditions were just right. It happened more often in Hollister and San Juan Bautista, which are more directly linked to the sea than Gilroy. Gilroy’s balmy summer evenings are the result of its being tucked under the protective wall of the Santa Cruz Mountains, which also apparently blocked the sound of the sea as well.
Fog slips into San Juan and Hollister on salt-scented wind many summer evenings, following the trace of the Pajaro River.
Of course, we know our streams and rivers flow into Monterey and San Francisco bays, but actually hearing the surf must have been a powerfully affecting reminder of our link to the sea. Some mornings, I’m sure I can smell the tang of the sea in the damp air. An aunt who grew up in Aromas remembers a distinctly different tang.
A whaling station still operated in Moss Landing when she was a child, and when the whales were being processed, the scent made itself powerfully known in Aromas. People would come from miles around to marvel at the sea-going giants being so unceremoniously plundered.
Those yellowed newspaper clippings remind me of more than our proximity to the Pacific. It reminds me of how quiet it must have been, and of how precious quiet is now.
If you’re not likely to attract unwanted attention by doing so, stop what you’re doing for a moment, put down the newspaper, and hold still. Listen. Mentally catalog all the hums, chirps, burps, squeaks and other noises around you.
Fluorescent lights may be humming, the heater fan going, a radio murmuring in the home next door. There’s probably traffic in the background, perhaps a distant train or passing plane.
We bathe in a symphony of noises that we’re obliged to ignore. Most of the time, we’re unaware of it because we’ve conditioned ourselves to ignore life’s static.
Quiet has become so unfamiliar that it seems to be a curious noise in itself. It’s so rare that when two or more people encounter a moment of auditory peace, someone is almost sure to shatter it by exclaiming, “it’s so quiet!” Make that, “it was so quiet.”
One small group of specialists – those who either earn their living or pass their hours by recording natural sounds – listen for the silence of a landscape free of the distracting noises of modern life. Those landscapes are growing more and more difficult to find, but they’re there.
One day during Christmas week, my wife and I went for a stroll along Santa Ana Valley Road. It was a still morning, sounds muffled by a high overcast. As Ravens passed overhead, each deep beat of their wings was accompanied by the sturdy, steady sound of wind through them – whuff, whuff, whuff. There was an intimacy to the encounter that could never be duplicated without that sound. One day last summer, I wandered along a track in the Santa Cruz Mountains. It was a hot morning in August, and as the sun reached a patch of broom plant, the air crackled with the sound of ripe pods bursting open to disperse their cargo of latent life in the form of seeds.
We’re especially attuned to some sounds. We know the cry of our children, the bark of our dogs. Some birds – Lawrence’s Goldfinch and Horned Lark to name two found locally – often give away their presence first with their clear, chime-like calls so the feather-chasers among us react to their calls with familiarity.
Our lives are too full of activity to ever expect to read a newspaper account in The Pinnacle like the one at the top of this column. But we live in a place that’s still empty enough and wild enough that we can make our own notation from time to time: “the sound of almost nothing was heard by those who cared to listen for it today.”
In other news
The 2002 round of Audubon Christmas Bird Counts is complete, adding another layer of data, and another trove of stories and memories for North American birds and birders in this century-old tradition.
The counts are a great opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of our region, and a greater love for what it has to offer. I collected some new memories of my own on local counts this time.
You need not be an authority to participate, just someone with an interest and the time. Four days after Christmas, I was one of four people watching Ravens finish up their own holiday feast on a coyote carcass when they quickly scattered to make room for the Bald Eagle who decided he wanted a place at the table. Five years from now, you may not remember the scores of the bowl games you watched this year, but I can assure you that I’ll still have the memory of that eagle that shared his lonely valley with us that chilly day.
Mark Paxton lives in Hollister and works in Morgan Hill. His e-mail address is
pa*****@ho*****.com
.
