Natural quiet

April 29th, 2024

Nights are warm now, and I can sleep with my windows open. Around 10 pm it is already very quiet, barely a sound can be heard and that soothes me to sleep. It is even better when I can hear a train horn in the distance. Railroad tracks are about a kilometer from where I live. That distance mutes that sound which is jarring from up close, but when heard when night falls and from far away, it sounds like a gentle reminder of the world still moving when I am in bed. And that calms me and makes me feel safe for some reason. Maybe it is because I heard the same sounds when I was a child and that was enough for my imagination to run wild making scenarios about trains going to some places I have never been to, and about the fact that when I wake up, that train will be hundreds of kilometers away, basking in the sunrise as it moves along the tracks…

But that is still a mechanical sound. Human ingenuity made the horn and a human hand pressed the button to release the sound. Yesterday, I experienced different kinds of sounds, natural and distinguished sounds from all others. Those sounds, paradoxically, are a part of quietness that can only be experienced in nature. I was kayaking and, as always, I paddled away from the marina, to the furthest corner of my reservoir. There, I stopped, letting the currents and waves and wind move my kayak around. I just sat there soaking in the quietness — full of birds' songs and the chirping of grasshoppers and rustling of the wind in the reeds on the water. There were plenty of sounds, and yet for me, that was only a glorious quietness. Only a few minutes of it were enough to bring calmness and contentment to my mind. I already want to experience this again.