乌鲁鲁日落（照片由 Martin Fisher/Flickr 提供）
“终有一天，人类将不得不像对抗霍乱和瘟疫一样，毫不留情地与噪音作斗争。”诺贝尔奖得主、 细菌学家罗伯特·科赫在1905年如是说。一个世纪过去了，这一天已近在眼前。如今，寂静已成为濒危物种。我们的城市、郊区、农场社区，甚至最广袤偏远的国家公园，都无法摆脱人类噪音的侵扰。即使在北极，噪音也难以幸免；跨越大陆的喷气式飞机早已让这一切成为现实。此外，对抗噪音并不等同于保护寂静。我们常用的抗噪策略——耳塞、降噪耳机，甚至噪音管制法——都无法提供真正的解决方案，因为它们无助于我们重新与土地建立联系，聆听土地的声音。而土地正在诉说着它的声音。
人类历史已然到了一个特殊时期，全球环境危机迫使我们彻底改变生活方式。我们比以往任何时候都更需要重新爱上这片土地。静谧是我们相遇的地方。
聆听自然环境，不受干扰，并从中领悟意义，是我们的天赋权利。在人类的喧嚣出现之前，世间只有自然界的声音。我们的耳朵进化得如此完美，能够聆听到这些声音——这些声音远远超越了人类语言的范围，甚至超越了我们最雄心勃勃的音乐演奏：一阵微风预示着天气的变化，春天第一声鸟鸣预示着大地复苏，万物重现生机，暴风雨的临近预示着干旱的缓解，潮起潮落则让我们想起天上的芭蕾。所有这些体验都将我们与土地以及我们进化的过去重新连接起来。
“一平方英寸的寂静” 位于奥林匹克国家公园内的霍赫雨林，堪称美国最宁静的地方。然而，它也面临着被破坏的危险，仅靠一项既未被国家公园管理局实际执行，也缺乏足够法律支持的政策来保护。我希望“一平方英寸的寂静”能够唤醒所有愿意真正倾听的人们，让他们在静谧中觉醒。
保护自然的宁静与物种保护、栖息地恢复、有毒废物清理和二氧化碳减排等诸多挑战一样必要且至关重要，而这些挑战仅仅是我们在这个尚处于萌芽阶段的世纪所面临的众多紧迫挑战中的几个。好消息是，拯救宁静远比解决其他问题容易得多。一项简单的法律就能带来巨大而立竿见影的改善。这项法律将禁止所有飞机飞越我们最原始的国家公园。
寂静并非某物的缺失，而是万物的存在。它深藏于霍赫雨林的一平方英寸（One Square Inch）之中。它是时间的静谧，不受干扰。它能触动你的心弦。寂静滋养着我们的本性，我们的人性，让我们认识自我。拥有更敏锐的心灵和更合乎心意的耳朵，我们不仅能更好地聆听自然，也能更好地倾听彼此。寂静如同火堆中的余烬，可以随风飘散。寂静可以被寻觅，也可以找到你。寂静可以失去，也可以被寻回。然而，寂静无法被想象，尽管大多数人如此认为。想要体验寂静那令人心潮澎湃的奇妙，你必须聆听它。
寂静也是一种声音，无数种声音。我听过的寂静多到数不清。寂静是月光下郊狼的歌声，是它伴侣的回应。它是雪花飘落的轻柔低语，随后融化，伴随着令人惊艳的雷鬼节奏，如此清脆，你会忍不住想要翩翩起舞。它是授粉昆虫在松枝间穿梭，躲避微风时，发出轻柔的嗡鸣和松树的叹息，交织成一曲柔和的旋律，萦绕在你耳畔一整天。寂静是栗背山雀和红胸䴓飞过的鸟群，它们叽叽喳喳，扑扇着翅膀，唤醒你内心深处的好奇心。
你最近听过雨声吗？美国西北部广袤的雨林，不出所料，是聆听雨声的绝佳之地。以下是我在“一平方英寸的寂静”听到的。雨季的第一场雨并不潮湿。起初，无数的种子从高耸的树木上飘落。紧接着，枫叶轻柔地飘落，如同冬日的毯子，静静地为种子披上一层薄薄的绒毛。但这静谧的音乐会仅仅是序曲。
当第一场暴雨来临，奏响它雄浑的乐章时，每一种树木都在风雨中发出各自独特的声响。即使是最大的雨滴，也可能永远不会落到地上。在近300英尺高的森林树冠上，树叶和树皮吸收了大部分水分……直到这块空中的海绵吸饱了水分，雨滴重新凝结，继续向下飘落……撞击着较低的树枝，倾泻在吸音的苔藓上……轻敲着附生蕨类植物……轻轻地落在越橘丛上……拍打着坚硬的沙拉尔树叶……最后，雨滴无声地弯曲着酢浆草纤细的三叶草状叶片，滴落到土壤中。无论白天黑夜，这液体的芭蕾都会在雨停后持续一个多小时。
回想起罗伯特·科赫（Robert Koch）的警告——他是科学方法论的创始人，该方法论用于识别疾病的病因——我认为，肆意失去宁静就像煤矿里的金丝雀，预示着全球性的灾难。如果我们不能在这个问题上表明立场，如果我们对自然宁静的消失充耳不闻，我们又怎能指望在面对更加复杂的环境危机时做得更好呢？
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Amazing Article ! The contents so described are soul touching and capable enough to arouse the inner feeling of a sincere reader and a thinking man...This was the reason why our great saints and Hermits used to leave the cities and towns and migrated to the valleys and on the lap of great mountains to find the eternal truth...They were realizing that Silence is Golden and its sound is rhythmic but one need to have a pair of sensitive ears to listen those vibrant music of the nature....We do not need instruments to accompany and throat breaking noise or sound to catch anybody's attention. Instead we will learn the melodious songs of cuckoos, bellowing of cattle and similar sounds which will never break any body's journey for the silence. It is certainly soul searching to enter into a silent place and keep on listening and looking....one will automatically immerse in the soul of the mother nature..How beautiful that moment would be....It is to be experienced...So be away from the madding crowd at least once in a week.. and enjoy the silent songs of the nature..which is God Gifted to us...let us also explore and experience those mesmerizing impact of the silence and natures songs like a lullaby sung by our mother during our childhood.....
[Hide Full Comment]Beautiful! I live in SW Colorado surrounded by national forest & wilderness. I was struck on 9/11 when all the planes were grounded by the silence. In Bali they have a day a year when no planes fly, transportation & commercial activity stops. 24/7 commerce & non-stop human activity is a plague. I experience great blessings in having moments where the inner Silence of conscious awareness & the outer silence of moments here on the outskirts of so-called civilization I hear nothing but the sounds of nature, even their activity stills at times. The lake frozen over functions as a sound chamber making eerie mystifying sounds. Something occurs in body & soul in the naturalness. We are such amazing beings of consciousness, love & light and of human spirit, and creatures of the natural world also. Stop to smell the roses. Taste the wind. Touch the bark of a tree, the pine needles softness. See the natural light of sun, moon & stars. And listen, listen from the quietness within. Let natural sounds penetrate you & see how that feels. Contact with Silence within and without restores us. There's so much to be heard from the still small voice to the hum of the hummingbird, the robin heralding spring. Ultimately it all informs us as well as restores us. Listen up, those with ears to hear. The resounding Word is everywhere in everything.
[Hide Full Comment]Thank you, DailyGood and Gordon Hempton, for this beautiful piece. I will return to it often. And some day I hope to visit One Square Inch. Remembering Phillip Levine, who passed away Saturday -- here's a stanza from one his poems, Our Valley, that honors the immensity of silence. Thank you Phillip Levine. Peace all.
"You probably think I’m nuts saying the mountains have no word for ocean,
but if you live here you begin to believe they know everything.
They maintain that huge silence we think of as divine,
a silence that grows in autumn when snow falls
slowly between the pines and the wind dies
to less than a whisper and you can barely catch
your breath because you’re thrilled and terrified."
Thank you for debunking the misconception that silence is soundless. I think that, ultimately, listening to silence is mindfulness, meditation, presencing ...
I live in the Pacific
[Hide Full Comment]Northwest, and have all my 58 years. I teach in a local high school, and
get to share yoga as a PE elective. I have had a long standing focus for
yoga that it is quiet and without music, which is viewed at first by the students
as unfair and unheard of. Students at
first are frightened and surprised by how loud their personal thoughts are in
the silence of the yoga room, and then begin to crave the absence of
technology-driven distraction. I teach walking classes as a PE elective,
and the students are not allowed to listen to music and plug their ears with
earbuds or headphones (for ‘exercise’ motivation if you can imagine), nor even
have their phones with them (some drop the class because they are unable to do
this). We are located within the noise
pollution radius of the freeway, an expanding airport, and relentless increases
in coal/oil trains. We walk sidewalks
along streets with cars whizzing by, in close proximity to the hospital
helipad, and recently drones just overhead.
I do though get to observe students begin to recognize bird sounds from
chickadees, sparrows, juncos, hummingbirds, cedar waxwings, robins, seagulls,
crows, starlings, and then the local peregrine chatter and if really lucky eagle
cries from a hundred feet up as they circle toward the river. The students begin to discern the difference
between dog barks of ‘Hello, I’m here, can we play?’ and ‘Get away’. They start entertaining the idea they are no
longer invisible and recognize community members walking, biking, and jogging by
using eye contact and saying the word ‘hi’.
They have the opportunity to acquire listening and empathy skills as
they spend an hour with a walking partner who is conversing with them in close
contact. I love my job. The real reason I am writing, though, is that
over the years of indiscriminant development and significant paving of
farmland-open space-forested land in my beloved slice of heaven, there is a
slogan perpetuated by the local military base whose flights overhead have
stepped up significantly in the past ten years that this continuous low flying
military jet noise is the sound of freedom…and this includes the flights toward
the Olympic Peninsula, as well as over the San Juan Islands, toward Mt. Baker,
over a multitude of local lakes and streams, tiny communities, and wildlife of
all types. You may be able to tell I
would argue with this as we continue to raise generation after generation void
of connection with nature, quiet places and spaces, and opportunities for
silence.