Listening to the quiet
15/09/15 05:05
Silence, I think, is very rare. When we take time to quiet ourselves and really listen, there are all kinds of sounds that come to our ears. For years I have used the term “quiet prayer” instead of “silent prayer” in formal worship. I actually believe that the sounds that we hear when we take time to quiet ourselves can add to the quality of worship. When we hear the breathing of others, the gentle sounds of children, the wind in the trees and the sounds of our own breathing, we become aware of our place in the world in ways that are not so obvious in the general hustle and bustle of our busy lives.
There have been a few times when I have experienced very quiet places. The Idaho desert can be very quiet at night. Sometimes when you are lying in your bed in a very quiet place, you can hear your own heart and the blood circulating through your body.
Most of the time, however, we are surrounded by sounds.
The sounds of the forest where we are camping are very different from the sounds of the hills at home. At home we have the sounds of wind in the trees, an occasional song of the coyote, once in a while an owl. Where we live, we also have plenty of people sounds. We hear he cars on the road and the planes going to and from the airport and the Air Force Base. Ellsworth is home to the B-1 bomber which has a roar when it takes off that is even louder when they fire the afterburners for maximum thrust. The planes climb quickly and soon are out of earshot. And the crickets chirp though the summer evenings.
We’re camped in a hardwood forest today and though it is early, it is far from quiet. The song of the woods is the sound of the frogs. I don’t know how many frogs there are, but it sounds like a chorus of thousands. They have been singing all night long and there is indication that there will be any letup. There are also a few crickets that must be closer to our camper than the frogs because their chirps form a sort of foreground to the choral background. In the night I heard the hoot of an owl. I couldn’t tell from my limited experience what kind of owl it was, but I imagined a great horned owl hunting in the woods. I even wondered if owls eat frogs, though I’ve been taught that owls hunt by sight more than by sound.
As if often true when we camp, we’re not too far from the railroad, though the trees are dense enough to mute that sound and it actually seems farther away than I expected, knowing where the tracks run.
Once in the night I heard the planes depart from Whiteman Air Force Base. The B-2 is different from the sounds of the planes at home. There is a roar and a rush of air, but it quickly fades and it is hard to tell which direction the plane has gone.
In the midst of all of these new sounds of a new place, I slept remarkably well. The sounds were comforting, not disturbing. There were no sounds that seemed to me to be threatening. Of course, we’re pretty safe in our hard-sided camper, though I see nothing that would make me afraid to sleep in a tent in this place.
We are camped in Knob Noster State Park, near the town with the same name. There are many small hills in the area, and I don’t know if there is a single one from which the town and park gain their names. Perhaps the knobs are plural, though the name speaks of a single one. I read something that said that the local lore is that it was the place of a battle between different tribes of native people, though I know nothing of the indigenous tribes, nor of the battle. There is also some local lore that the nobs contained buried treasure, though I don’t think the treasure has ever been found.
Mostly Knob Noster is part of a rural area between the Missouri and Osage Rivers. There was a brief boom in the 1870’s when thick veins of coal were found near the surface of the land, but the coal was quickly mined and the boom was over in a decade or so. In the 1890’s a fire nearly destroyed the town, but enough remained that they rebuilt the town after the fire. Since then it has been a rural area without too many people - the kind of place that the U.S. was looking for to locate an Air Force Base during the frenzy and intensity of the Second World War. It was felt that locating bases at the center of the country made them less vulnerable to potential attack from enemy air forces. It must have worked. There’s never been an attack on Whiteman Air Force Base.
The base provides the jobs for our daughter and son-in-law. They live about 10 miles away in Warrensburg, so the campground in Knob Noster State Park is a perfect base for us as we visit.
This is our first night of camping in this place. We camped at our daughter’s home when we had our previous camper. This is our first visit with this particular camper. So I don’t know the sounds of this place very well. I think that the frogsong occurs only at night. I didn’t hear them in the day when we were setting up our camper. At that time, there were a few birds chirping and the rustle of the breeze in the leaves. The wind in deciduous trees is different than the rustle of wind in the pine branches. It is a delightful sound. So we will be learning the sounds of this place.
It isn’t silent, but it is quiet and the sounds are comforting. Some days - and some nights - listening to the quiet is a joyful experience.
There have been a few times when I have experienced very quiet places. The Idaho desert can be very quiet at night. Sometimes when you are lying in your bed in a very quiet place, you can hear your own heart and the blood circulating through your body.
Most of the time, however, we are surrounded by sounds.
The sounds of the forest where we are camping are very different from the sounds of the hills at home. At home we have the sounds of wind in the trees, an occasional song of the coyote, once in a while an owl. Where we live, we also have plenty of people sounds. We hear he cars on the road and the planes going to and from the airport and the Air Force Base. Ellsworth is home to the B-1 bomber which has a roar when it takes off that is even louder when they fire the afterburners for maximum thrust. The planes climb quickly and soon are out of earshot. And the crickets chirp though the summer evenings.
We’re camped in a hardwood forest today and though it is early, it is far from quiet. The song of the woods is the sound of the frogs. I don’t know how many frogs there are, but it sounds like a chorus of thousands. They have been singing all night long and there is indication that there will be any letup. There are also a few crickets that must be closer to our camper than the frogs because their chirps form a sort of foreground to the choral background. In the night I heard the hoot of an owl. I couldn’t tell from my limited experience what kind of owl it was, but I imagined a great horned owl hunting in the woods. I even wondered if owls eat frogs, though I’ve been taught that owls hunt by sight more than by sound.
As if often true when we camp, we’re not too far from the railroad, though the trees are dense enough to mute that sound and it actually seems farther away than I expected, knowing where the tracks run.
Once in the night I heard the planes depart from Whiteman Air Force Base. The B-2 is different from the sounds of the planes at home. There is a roar and a rush of air, but it quickly fades and it is hard to tell which direction the plane has gone.
In the midst of all of these new sounds of a new place, I slept remarkably well. The sounds were comforting, not disturbing. There were no sounds that seemed to me to be threatening. Of course, we’re pretty safe in our hard-sided camper, though I see nothing that would make me afraid to sleep in a tent in this place.
We are camped in Knob Noster State Park, near the town with the same name. There are many small hills in the area, and I don’t know if there is a single one from which the town and park gain their names. Perhaps the knobs are plural, though the name speaks of a single one. I read something that said that the local lore is that it was the place of a battle between different tribes of native people, though I know nothing of the indigenous tribes, nor of the battle. There is also some local lore that the nobs contained buried treasure, though I don’t think the treasure has ever been found.
Mostly Knob Noster is part of a rural area between the Missouri and Osage Rivers. There was a brief boom in the 1870’s when thick veins of coal were found near the surface of the land, but the coal was quickly mined and the boom was over in a decade or so. In the 1890’s a fire nearly destroyed the town, but enough remained that they rebuilt the town after the fire. Since then it has been a rural area without too many people - the kind of place that the U.S. was looking for to locate an Air Force Base during the frenzy and intensity of the Second World War. It was felt that locating bases at the center of the country made them less vulnerable to potential attack from enemy air forces. It must have worked. There’s never been an attack on Whiteman Air Force Base.
The base provides the jobs for our daughter and son-in-law. They live about 10 miles away in Warrensburg, so the campground in Knob Noster State Park is a perfect base for us as we visit.
This is our first night of camping in this place. We camped at our daughter’s home when we had our previous camper. This is our first visit with this particular camper. So I don’t know the sounds of this place very well. I think that the frogsong occurs only at night. I didn’t hear them in the day when we were setting up our camper. At that time, there were a few birds chirping and the rustle of the breeze in the leaves. The wind in deciduous trees is different than the rustle of wind in the pine branches. It is a delightful sound. So we will be learning the sounds of this place.
It isn’t silent, but it is quiet and the sounds are comforting. Some days - and some nights - listening to the quiet is a joyful experience.