Slipstream

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Their cedar hot tub sits on the side of the mountain, overlooking a series of valleys and canyons that fade into the morning shadows. The Colorado River slices through one of the nearer valleys, but the steep rock face blocks any view of the water. Beyond that, a dirt road climbs up a slope to Cottonwood Pass, and beyond that, the tip of Byers Peak juts out from behind a small upsweep of land. You can even see bits of the Continental Divide, scraping the horizon to the east and south and catching the day’s first light.

My friends live off the grid, four miles up a grueling dirt road that’s passable only part of the year and only when the weather remains dry. I was lucky. The rains had held off and I made it up yesterday without incident, despite the steep inclines, severe dips, sharp drop-offs, muddy pot holes, and constant spray of rocks. My only hope is that it doesn’t rain before I get off the mountain.

But as I sit here, soaking in the solar-heated tub, I’m more focused on the surroundings than the road. The morning air is cool and crisp, and the sun is about to edge over the mountains. I stare out at the rolling slopes, covered mostly in sage and grass, till they approach 9,000 feet, then pockets of aspen appear as well as stands of lodgepole pine. But most of the pines are dead from a beetle infestation that has decimated much of the forests.

Even so, there’s grace and beauty in this terrain, and as I take in the view, breathe in the fragrances of chamomile and sage, I listen to the way the birds chirp and squawk and flutter from tree to tree. I listen too to the drone of insects, the howl of distant coyotes, the rustle of aspen leaves being lifted by a soft breeze winding through the branches.

This, I think, is how we were designed to greet the day.

But then I hear it. A combustible engine, a small aircraft from the sounds if it, nowhere in sight, but near enough to matter. In most places, I would probably not have noticed, but here, the engine is a stark intrusion that shakes me from my reverie, reminding me of the rarity of such solitude and quiet.

I shouldn’t be surprised. We live in an era in which such silence has become a luxury, a scarcity, unknown to most of us most of the time. For those of us who reside in an urban area, we can give up any hope of experiencing such quiet. Even shut up in our homes, we can rarely eliminate all outside sounds—the sirens, leaf blowers, car horns, garbage trucks. And inside we have our refrigerators and washers and dryers and microwaves and clock radios. Then there are the stereos and televisions and computers and cell phones and high-tech video games.

And it’s not just in urban settings we face the noisy dissonance. Even in rural areas, we’re often confronted by automobiles and motorboats and jet skis and car alarms and motorcycles and ATVs and stereos and plenty more televisions.

Sure, nature is full of its own sounds. And they’re not always pleasant. Those who’ve lived through hurricanes often cite the noise of the unrelenting winds as one of the most frightful aspects of their experiences. But for the most part, what we hear in nature often soothes, not grates, and in that quiet cadence we can find solitude and tranquility. We can find the will to look deeper at our lives and the way we place ourselves in the world.

When driving to Colorado, I crossed the Nevada desert at night, deciding it best to give my van—and me—a break from the heat. At a rest stop just west of Winnemucca, I pulled into an unpaved section separate from the main facilities. I parked on the edge of the desert, with my sliding door open to the starry tranquility. Though I could still hear the hum of the interstate, relatively quiet at this late hour, I could hear too the sounds of the desert—the rustle of animals and insects as they settled into the night.

I fell into a restful sleep, my face pointed out toward the desert, and felt the quiet enfold and enchant me. But then I was woken by the sound of an engine, a mid-size sedan parked not far from me. The driver sat with the car running, the lights blazing into the night, pointed directly at me. I had no choice. I got up and started my car and continued to drive. It was that or ram his high-performing Volvo.

I ended up sleeping in a casino parking lot.

We are a culture, it seems, that does anything it can to avoid silence, as though it is the quiet itself we fear the most. Rarely can we be without our radios or our TVs or our music so loud that reflection and contemplation and serenity become an impossibility.

Just the other night, I camped along Chicago Creek outside Idaho Springs. Several campers were already spread out along the banks on the other side of the water. Because this was not an official campground, people grabbed whatever spots suited them.

At about eleven, as I was about to turn out my light, a man appeared outside my van, holding his flashlight in such a way I thought he was an apparition. I let out a loud “What the fuck!” which I think scared him as much as he had scared me.

With a stoner’s nasally slur, he quickly apologized and explained that he and his buddies wanted to play their car stereo for a while and was checking in whether it would be all right. I figured with as far away as they had parked and the swift stream only a few feet from my van, filling the valley with the sound of rushing water, I would never hear the stereo. I was wrong. At about two in the morning, I finally gave up and closed up my camper and sought out another spot, which ended up being a rest area on Interstate 70.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, noise pollution adversely affects the lives of millions of people in the US. Any sound that interferes with normal activities can result in health problems such as high blood pressure, sleep disruption, stress-related illnesses, and, of course, hearing loss.

Research by the World Health Organization suggests that out of a hundred deaths attributed to heart disease, three might be the result of noise.

Yet noise levels, if anything, are increasing. There are more cars on the roads and more planes in the air. Amplified rock music now averages between 110 to 130 decibels, about the same as a military jet, shotgun, or air raid siren. More people than ever are experiencing hearing loss as a result of headphone use. In fact, most of us are exposed to dangerous noise levels on a daily basis.

It’s no accident that US interrogators play rock music at excruciating volumes in order to disorientate and break Iraqi prisoners.

Even for those of us not Iraqi prisoners, getting away from that noise has become more difficult all the time. The outdoors have, for many, become nothing more than a playground, a source of recreation and entertainment that brings with it as much sound as a New York intersection. That’s not to say outdoor recreation is a bad thing, but I wonder about our growing inability to appreciate the natural sounds that wilderness brings, our incapacity to approach nature with the respect and reverence it deserves, rather than treating it as a playfield meant only to provide us with yet one more noisy distraction.

I ease back into the hot tub and listen to the plane fade into the distance and watch the sun peak over the mountain. A hummingbird buzzes past me and a chipmunk scurries through the brush. Then I hear a quick screech and I see, soaring over the valley, a red-tail hawk, swooping down into the fields, out of my line of sight.

I drop lower into the water and wait for the sun to shine fully onto the deck. Every movement I make I try to do so as quietly as possible, for fear of disrupting the serenity that surrounds me. The plane is gone for now, but I know it’s just a matter of time before another flies by or a train blows its whistle or a jet passes high above the clouds or an ATV roars through the nearby forests. I only hope that what I gain at this moment, I can retain long after I get off the mountain.