Friday, March 24, 2017

THE SOUNDS OF LIFE AS WRITTEN IN THE FALL OF 2016

Once on a camping trip to the boundary waters, I remember sitting around a campfire in the evening and being mesmerized by the absolute quietness. It was almost an eerie feeling but it was then that I realized how important my hearing was to me. I lived in the cities at that time, in a place where there is no such thing as a quiet moment. From my bedroom window there was always the sound of constant traffic, if not from the street in front of my house, from the freeway three blocks away. Neighbors talking in their yards and cars starting up. Train whistles from the tracks two miles away and sirens from emergency vehicles, and the back up horns of garbage trucks and delivery vehicles. There was always a lawn mower or a snow blower going someplace and the constant spitz, spitz, spitz, of the neighbors sprinklers. Dogs barking and feral cats meowing. Then we moved to the lake and the sounds changed and our world changed. At least the way we heard it. As I sit at my desk this morning I hear three things. Raindrops on the roof, the hum of the refrigerator and the clicking of the keyboard as I type. Some other sounds I might hear from time to time are the loons celebrating, a passing boat motor and waves lapping on the shore but this morning, it’s pretty quiet. My son-in-law told me that after he and my daughter moved to Arizona the sounds he missed the most were birds singing and the wind in the trees. They have trees, but not the kind that make much noise and in the hot months the birds seem to disappear. Mostly all you hear is traffic. Incessant traffic in a busy, busy city and air conditioners running. As a kid growing up in Staples we had our share of noise pollution for a small town. We lived a block from a major highway and it was a busy railroad town during the age of the steam engines. But for the most part wherever you live you may hear a lot but you digest just what you want to hear and tune the rest out. It’s when you change environments that your ears get a work out, at least for a while. There are sounds I used to hear that I miss and I will probably never hear again. The church bells ringing on the Catholic Church in Staples calling people to worship on Sunday morning. The click of Moms knitting needles, as she sat in her chair in the evening knitting. Sitting in the train depot on a cold winter night, I would just close my eyes and listen to the telegraph keys clicking off a message from the clerk’s office. Cows mooing in a cattle truck, at a truck stop, a block from our house. Then there were the sounds of my three brothers breathing as we slept, four of us in the same cold room. We are constantly barraged with sounds and sometimes when we hear nothing, that’s when we get alarmed. It’s a feeling that something is wrong, something is not working. Something isn’t right. We don’t realize how important our ears are-- besides holding our glasses up-- until its totally quiet. I remember as a fire fighter working in a blackout environment, inside of a burning building, listening for the crackling of the flames and the sounds of my partners breathing apparatus. When our first baby was born, I remember standing in the bedroom doorway at night, listening to him breathing. I needed that reassurance he was all right. How different it must be not to hear.

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