Listening for Silence

Silence is the poetics of space, what it means to be in a place. —Gordon Hempton

The Hoh Rain Forest is one of the largest temperate rain forests in the United States. Situated within the Olympic National Park in western Washington State, the Hoh is protected from commercial logging and is a haven for old-growth Sitka spruce, western hemlock, coast Douglas-fir, big-leaf maples, and black cottonwoods. Far from trafficked roads and the unrelenting bellow of development, the Hoh remains one of the quietest places in North America.

Acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton defines silence not as the absence of sound, but as the absence of noise from modern life. For thirty-five years, Hempton has been documenting the sounds of the Hoh and its many species: Pacific tree frogs, Roosevelt elk, northern spotted owls, red-breasted nuthatches, Pacific wrens.

But even the remote Hoh is increasingly polluted by noise. Planes fly over the rain forest en route to Seattle, emitting a dull roar that punctures the silence of the landscape.

Hempton believes that silence, everywhere, is on the verge of extinction.

Listening through a microphone taught Hempton to take things in with equal value, without judgment. We were struck by this, and as we joined Hempton in this practice, we found that we were completely present in the landscape and deeply connected to the space around us. We were surprised by the intricate sounds of life, from the creaking trees to the cacophony of birdsong filling the forest. We felt attuned to nature in ways we hadn’t experienced before. As we considered what would be lost in a world where silence has gone extinct, we wondered how we could offer others a chance to experience the world through Hempton’s way of listening, in which sounds have their own voice.

Our hope with these listening exercises is that you come away with a new perspective toward sound and the power of silence. The simple act of listening to the natural world can profoundly impact our relationship to place, rooting us in a presence that we otherwise often take for granted.

We invite you to participate in a five-step practice of listening—an opportunity to experience place through sound. These exercises could be done over the course of a day, a week, a month. Try to listen without judgment and simply be present, open, and curious.

If you are going to listen, you have to be willing to change. —Gordon Hempton