The sound of silence

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This morning I experienced it.
At 05:26 to be exact.
I was in Death Valley and there was no wind. no birds, no traffic, no planes NOTHING.
Death_Valley_sunrise.jpg

total and absolute bliss for the 30+ minutes I stood there watching the sun come up.

Samantha

Comments

I've heard

Alecia Snowfall's picture

I've heard of similar experiences by many out at Black Rock Desert on the Playa.

quidquid sum ego, et omnia mea semper; Ego me.
alecia Snowfall

Moon Simulation

I had an experience similar to that when I wast about 40 miles North of Enterprise, Oregon, but it only lasted about 10 minutes until a light plane passed over.

Gwen

Death Valley is a great place

littlerocksilver's picture

Camped there for a week during spring vacation. Ubehebe Crater, Bad Water, Dante's Point, Devils Golf Course, etc. A few years ago they had so much rain that a lake formed and you could swim in water that was lie the Dead Sea.

Portia

I remember

Angharad's picture

remarking to someone that it was so quiet I could hear my tinnitus.

Angharad

I experienced that in Joshua

I experienced that in Joshua Tree National Monument in Southern California in the late 70's. The air was so still and it was so quiet that when I walked, the sand crunching under my feet sounded like a loud roar. It was near an abandoned gold mine. I remember imagining the extreme quiet being broken by the intense sounds of the ore crusher echoing over the hills when the mine was operating. I had driven up solo on my bike from San Diego just to spend a few hours hiking around part of Joshua Tree. It proved to be well worth the trip.

_Bev_

Hello Darkness, My Old Friend

There's folklore that suggest that if you're in remote western North Dakota and can't see any artificial light you must then count seven fence post, seven times turn around and meet . . . the devil. What's amazing about that is that there are places in western North Dakota that are so remote that you won't see any artificial life. The part about the devil is readily acceptable. If you don't see him at least once a day in what is happening, you just aren't looking.

When I lived in Bismarck years ago I would go to the top of Bismarck Junior College hill, turn south and see for tens of miles along the Missouri River bottom land. Nature was staggering.

We get caught up in what man does when even the mightiest efforts are puny when measured against what is around us.

And yet - - we're seemingly at the verge of bringing nature to its knees.

Hurray for us.

Angela Rasch (Jill M I)

Eighty miles of empty

erin's picture

When I was 9 we moved to the edge of the Mojave desert. If I crossed the dirt road in front of our house and the canal on the other side of it, then there was eighty miles of empty desert between me and the next human outpost south (Ocotillo Wells) to west (Borrego Springs). If you walked a bit less than half a mile you were into a wide wash the sides of which blocked sound and sight of the inhabited land behind you. If you sat there long enough for the little desert critters to forget you, you heard the most astonishing noises: quiet pops and crackles and whines from invisible inhabitants.

Years later when I watched The Gods Must Be Crazy there was a scene where two of the San hunters were out in the silent desert communicating with each other in their whispered, clicking language and I realized that the animals around them would not be disturbed by their talking because it sounded just like what I remembered from the Mojave.

Hugs,
Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.