Sanctuaries of Silence
In an age where noise pollution is omnipresent, Global Oneness Project’s new film urges viewers to learn how to listen again.
It was 3 a.m. and Gordon Hempton was recording voiceovers inside his yurt on the waterfront town of Port Townsend, Washington, when he paused. In the distance, he heard a logging truck rumbling down the road. “This guy sounds like a new driver based on the speed he’s going,” he said into the microphone. The growl of the throttle’s pitch was unfamiliar and he took a few moments to catalogue it in the audio library of his mind.
Hempton is a man who really knows how to listen. An acoustic ecologist by profession, he’s spent the last 35 years hunting for Earth’s rarest nature sounds, largely in Washington’s Hoh Rainforest. But his most difficult quarry of all has been silence.
Although Earth is full of uninhabited wilderness, truly audible silence is on the verge of total extinction. There are almost no places in the world where a visitor can expect to go 24 hours without hearing manmade noise. Even in the middle of the Amazon rainforest, an airplane could fly right over your head.
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Source: Backpacker