Quiet Matters

Spring among the stars, frogs, trees, and flowers.

February’s end.

Darkness finds her voice. Too-cold winter done, too-wet too-early over, the neighbors gather their chorus. The six-legged drone among the bare trees, the tiny peepers EEeepEEeepEEeep near the water, and the big frogs groan their bassline under it all. They sing in the tune of deep time.

Above, the sky lifts a veil to reveal farther distant stars. The usual constellations are brighter with the black contrast, bejeweled by the celestial bodies hidden except for rare nights like this.

I am as silent as the tears that pool at my lashes, so awed and grateful I am, again, to live in the woods.

*****

Fifty miles away, if I’d been in the neighborhood I called home for almost 20 years, I might have heard the faint hum of tiny creatures, few in number, as the machines drowned them out—traffic whoosh, motorcycle roar, alarm chirps. Obscured by artificial light, the Big Dipper would hang tarnished and flat. For almost a lifetime, this was familiar but felt, somehow, not right.

*****

March.

—I take a turn in a slant of light revealed by a breeze and see a tree I hadn’t noticed before, one usually hidden by the pines, sweet gum, and hornbeams on the ridge. Its hollow is what catches my attention, but as I approach, I assess the shape, the shag—look up—it’s alive, with short pale-green needle-leaves on the high branches. This is the only live red cedar I’ve seen on my walks. The rest are dead, probably from a blight, but this one is huge and old and surviving. Hello, miracle. My hands move across the bark, scratchy against my palms, a rustle in my ears. A squirrel skitters through the dry leaves on the ground and scratches up a tree. The wind shifts. A car zooms down the rural highway that cuts through this part of the hills.

—Planted three years ago, the red buckeye has its first brilliant red spire. I’ve waited for this, remembering other seeds that required my patience for the tree to grow old enough to yield its initial burst of fire, one that will spread taller and wider each year after. The flowers aren’t close to opening yet, but I sit nearby to watch the tree’s glossy, thin leaves turn with the air’s gentle gusts. Several yards away, under a pine’s shade, a redbud blooms. Late, I realize, that freezing winter, I think. A cool exhale nudges the pine eastward with enough force that….yes, a sneeze of pastel pollen drifts toward the pond, a sight so unexpected, I laugh out loud.

—Full moon yet to rise. I gather twigs and branches—I want a fire, I love fire—and will keep it small and tended because the wind is forceful. Once it catches, the flames bow north. I sit close enough to toss sticks and stir the embers. The eerie cuk-cuk-cuk-cuks of a pileated woodpecker urge me to search the treeline for its redwhiteblack blur in flight. Nothing. The wind dies down for a few seconds, long enough to hear someone’s power tool in the distance. My mantra, this noise is occasional not constant this noise is occasional not constant this noise is occasional not constant. Too cloudy for a glowing sunset, I look west anyway. A huge dragonfly, followed by two more, dart overhead. One zips 180 degrees and snatches a mosquito out of thin air. I cannot remember ever seeing for myself why they’re called by another name, mosquito hawks. They disappear, then return, several of them in a formation that makes me think of fighter jets. I’m appalled at myself, aware how conditioned I am—against my will—that I’d associate violence and control with a pattern in the sky that’s existed for 300 million years.

Red buckeye in partial bloom.

*****

Fifty miles away, the machines dominate. Still. The house where once I lived was half glass, half wood. How I loved the sunlight’s shift from day into night, through the seasons, sacred in its certainty. How I came to despise the ever-increasing cacophony outside the thin window panes. More traffic, more tear-down-build-new construction, more lawn crews with their vile leaf blowers. wuuhhhhhhhhh Those fortunate enough to not notice such things, I envy them. Of those who are mildly annoyed, I envy them, too, and sorry that they, like wuuhhh wuuhhh me, when exposed to chronic noise, are susceptible to health problems—high blood pressure, cerebrovascular disease, metabolic disturbances, sleep disruption, and concentration lapses.*

“Noise is sound that overloads the central nervous system.”** Overloaded was how I lived. Going mad from the unpredictability, frequency, intensity, and duration of the music of modern life. wuuhhhhhh wuuhh wuhh wuhhhhhhhh Entering menopause like the initiation that it was, the last of the psychic blinders and bumper pads torn away, leaving me raw and wanting for peace within and without. I didn’t need professional help for a maladaptation, wuhhhhhhhhhhh to be gaslit into believing there was something wrong with me rather than with the man-made environment humans were expected to endure.

Every cell in my body, every wuhh wuhh WUHHHHHHHHH particle of my soul, begged for relief.

“The human auditory system was designed to process the frequencies and intensities relevant to survival in sound environments of nature. The evolutionary process has not allowed humans enough time to adapt hearing to sounds generated by loud modern noise sources.”**

WUUUUHHHHHHHH wuhhh wuhh

Chirp.

WUUUHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Rustle.

WUUUHHHHH WUUUHHHHH wuuhh WUUUHHHHH

Hum.

WUUUHHHHH wuuhh wuuhh wuuhh wuuhh wuuhh

Croak.

WUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHHHHHHHH WUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHHH

WUUUUUUHHHHHHHHHHHH wuuhh wuuhh WUUUUUUHHHHHHHHHHHH WUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Howl.

*****

Still March.

—The night of the equinox, chilly, clear, and still. Except for an insect hum now and then, the yap of a canine beast far away, it’s quiet. So quiet I can hear the high-pitched weeeeee inside my head. Tinnitus, science tells me, but maybe it’s the harmony of my inner cosmos. I sit on the porch steps and sink into silence. I am an animal in communion as I breathe with the creatures and plants around me. It’s different for the body to anticipate a hoot, cry, or crash of limb rather than a mechanical sound, a rev, a blast, a shot. Eyes closed, primal listening for a scuffle in the dark. Armadillo? Racoon? Deer? Coyote? A friend asked me if I’m ever afraid living where I do. Never. I’m safer there than I was in a nice, proper neighborhood.

—The next night. The pecan tree’s leaves are four days old, an unfurling that officially declares spring is here. Insects whir from all directions. Frogs EEeep and ggrrtTT near the pond. A barred owl, who-who-who-who, who-who-who-whoooooo. Mosquitoes eereehhh at my ear. This, though loud, is in its way quiet. I put my head in my hands. Their frequencies move through my brain, an orchestral score settling and resetting what human thought and experience disrupt. So much is on fire—family, nation, world—but right now I am what the songs pass through under the stars.

—Two days later. I don’t see them, but I hear them, the newly hatched and emerged. Everything is greener, fuller, fragrant. I take a slow walk surrounded by birdsong. I make the rounds through my community, among my tree people, where I feel expansive and golden. On my way home, I go to the old cedar. Under the thickening shade, I embrace it with my forehead against the trunk.

There I stand and open the door to the sound of being.

Old red cedar.

*https://apha.org/policies-and-advocacy/public-health-policy-statements/policy-database/2022/01/07/noise-as-a-public-health-hazard; https://www.epa.gov/clean-air-act-overview/clean-air-act-title-iv-noise-pollution
**https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1568850/

Thank you for reading CRONE ENERGY. I write about deep, sensitive people in strange, transformative circumstances, which obviously includes me. That also refers to my four novels—The Mercy of Thin Air and the Keeper of Tales Trilogy (The Mapmaker’s War, The Chronicle of Secret Riven, and The Plague Diaries).