I had
been looking for Ace for close to an hour, wandering through deep, mossy,
gouges in the hills filled with fallen leaves. The November sun struck
only patches of the gray sand, leaving the rest of the woods dark and cold.
Looking out from a raised bluff, I experiences the rarity of an almost complete
silence. I strained my ears to pick out the faintest sounds of clashing tags on
a dog’s collar or paws on wet leaves. I felt the silence surrounding me even though I knew
I could break it with the slightest movement. I didn’t want to.
Initially, I tried to be as quiet as I could be to
identify my runaway dog. Once that silence had been built, however, I felt a
need to maintain my place in it. Until the urge to find Ace before sundown
moved me from the perch, the wind from the Long Island Sound was the
only….sound.
This month, the AAAS brought attention to a new map of “Loudness”
in The United States. On it I noticed a big, blue blotch that marks the
Adirondack territory in an otherwise noisy NY state. If products are already being
advertised for what they don’t include- gluten, BPA, GMOs- why not noise? To
those seeking respite from a loudening New York City, silence could be a
resource worth paying for. The strange thing about selling silence as a luxury
is that you can’t record it or weigh it. Silence cannot be collected, traded or
Instagrammed. Yet, it can be broken and has value.
In a link below, I have included some Silent Resorts and
Silent Vacations that are popping up around the world to meet the isolationist
demand resulting from 24/7 email and phone connectivity. Putting aside all the
evidence of “noise pollution” and its negative impact on blood pressure, concentration
and productivity, silence should be valued and protected in its own right as a
vital resource of The Adirondacks.
Silent Resorts: http://fortune.com/2014/09/17/silent-luxury-resorts/
This is a really neat find! I definitely think there are a lot of benefits to be had from silence. This reminds me of some of the maps we looked at during our visit to the Wild Center, such as the map that showed light pollution (there was a dark spot over the park because it doesn't have much) and the air traffic map (very little over the park as well). These types of graphics really show how different the Adirondack Park is from the rest of the state of New York.
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