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By Abby Quillen

My world has gotten a lot louder lately. My 2-year-old son, Ezra, just discovered noise.

“Airplane, airplane, airplane.” He gestures toward the sky until I repeat, “Airplane.”

“Car!” He interrupts the story I’m reading and spins toward the window as a Volvo station wagon rolls by.[1] “Phone, phone, phone,” he says as we walk through the grocery store and hear cellphones chirping.[2]

Usually I’m blocking out[3] these sounds. I suppose it’s a survival mechanism that helps me live in a world full of obnoxious, cacophonous noises,[4] because now that Ezra’s pointing them out to me, I’m longing for silence.

I’m not the only one. Gordon Hempton, an acoustic ecologist, travels the world recording natural soundscapes, and he’s been spreading some alarming news: Natural silence is going extinct.[5]

“In the last 30 years, I’ve found it nearly impossible in the United States to experience 15 minutes or longer where there’s not some kind of noise disruption in the background,” Mr. Hempton explained in a recent radio interview.

A couple weeks after Ezra starts identifying sounds, my sister announces she’s coming for a visit and wants to go for a hike[6]. “As long as it’s somewhere quiet,” I reply.

We choose McDowell Creek Falls, which is an hour from my house in Eugene, Ore. We turn off I-5[7] and head down a country road. The farmhouses thin; the road narrows; Douglas firs, Western hemlocks, and moss-covered big leaf maples crowd in.[8] A stream babbles[9] on our right. I can almost taste the silence.

When Hempton talks about natural silence, he’s not talking about the absence of all sound, just of man-made sound. Natural silence can be surprisingly loud, as anyone who’s been to the Oregon coast, visited a rain forest, or heard an elk bugling on a crisp fall morning can attest.[10]

My sister parks the car and I strap[11] my son onto my back. Then we cross a bridge and wind up a hill. My sister stops to snap photos of salmonberries[12] and snails, and I close my eyes. I can hear a waterfall, birds, and an animal scampering through the undergrowth.[13]

“Big truck!” Ezra squeals, as a logging truck rumbles down a nearby road.[14]

Back in Eugene I surf through real estate[15] websites from the tiny Colorado mountain town where I grew up. When I moved to the city for college, I told someone where I was from, and she replied, “Oh yes, I go there to listen to the silence.” When I temporarily moved back a few years later, I appreciated what she meant. The evenings were notably quiet in my neighborhood. Most of the houses were dark by 9, few cars passed, and it was more than a mile to the closest highway, which wasn’t exactly teeming with traffic most nights.[16]

I start planning a visit with just one thing on the itinerary: sitting outside in the evenings and staring at the stars – just me and the crickets, hoot owls, and the occasional barking dog.[17] I call my parents to announce we’re coming and to lament that I’m thinking of wearing earplugs from now on.[18]

“I thought you left because it was quiet,” my mom says.

“What are you talking about?” I flash back to the last summer I spent in my hometown before leaving for my freshman year at the University of Denver. I longed to crowd onto the trolley and ride up the Sixteenth Street Mall, weave through packed city sidewalks, and shout along to rock concerts at Red Rocks.[19]

“Remember, you used to complain about how dull it is here, how everyone goes to bed at 9, how...” I interrupt my mom, almost letting it slip[20] that sometimes I go to bed at 9 now. Instead, I change the subject and wander around the house closing windows; outside, a diesel truck is idling and a weed wacker is hacking.[21]

Gordon Hempton teaches wilderness listening at Olympic National Park, and he writes that some students have a difficult time hearing silence for the first time and that many sounds aren’t audible[22] until people have been out on the trail for two or three days. He writes about an elderly woman who took one of his classes. She thought she was losing her hearing and hoping to amplify[23] what little she had left. But in the class, she realized that the problem wasn’t that she’d lost her hearing. What she’d lost was her ability to listen. I think Ezra is teaching me the same thing.

“Leaves,” he says as we walk through our neighborhood. He points up. Far above our heads, the birch leaves are dancing in the breeze, and their gentle rattle drowns out the sound of a passing car. I turn my face up and remember to listen.[24]

Vocabulary

1. spin: 疾馳；Volvo station wagon: 沃爾沃牌客貨兩用轎車。

2. grocery store: 雜貨店；chirp: 原指“鳥鳴的聲音”，此處形容手機的響聲。

3. block out: 把……關在外面。

4. obnoxious: 令人不快的，討厭的；cacophonous: 刺耳的。

5. acoustic ecologist: 聲音生態學家；soundscape: 音響范圍，背景；alarming: 使人驚恐；extinct: 滅絕的。

6. hike: 徒步旅行。

7. I-5: 5號州際公路（Interstate 5的簡稱），是美國州際公路系統的一部分。

8. 農舍漸小，道路漸窄，道格拉斯冷杉、西部鐵杉，還有苔蘚覆蓋的大葉楓樹遍布。

9. babble: 潺潺作聲。

10. elk: 麋鹿；bugle:（公路）叫春；crisp: 清冷的；attest: 證實。

11. strap: 用帶子捆。

12. salmonberry: 美莓，美洲大樹莓。

13. scamper: 蹦蹦跳跳地跑；undergrowth: 灌木叢。

14. logging:（木材）采運作業；rumble: 轟隆作響。

15. real estate: 房地產。

16. highway: 公路；teeming: 充滿。

17. itinerary: 旅程，行程；hoot owl: 森鸮，一種發出鷹叫聲的貓頭鷹。

18. lament: 哀悼；earplug: 耳塞。

19. 我渴望（隨人流）擠上電車，一直開往第六街（是丹佛市最熱鬧的商業街），穿梭在擁擠的城市人行道上，在紅石公園的搖滾音樂會上一起吶喊。

20. slip: 被遺忘，被忽視。

21. diesel: 柴油；weed wacker: 割草機；hack: 原意為“大刀闊斧地刪除”，此處指割草。

22. audible: 聽得見的。

23. amplify: 放大。

24. birch: 樺樹；rattle: 嘎吱作響的聲音；drown: 淹沒。

（來源：英語學習雜志）