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Aug 5, 2008

"See how nature - trees, flowers, grass - grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence...we need silence to be able to touch souls." --Mother Teresa

Saving the Sound of Silence

Hearing the chirp of a bird in the distance, I expect our unofficial park guide to identify another animal resident here in Olympic National Park, as he had earlier with the call of a Roosevelt elk. "An intruder," he whispers in a serious tone. As Hempton whips out a hand-held sound metre from his bike messenger bag, I realize it's not birdsong but the drone of an airplane in the far distance that has brought him to attention. "One nineteen," he notes in an official voice, reporting the time while opening up the instrument that charts noise levels on the decibel A scale, the easiest way to measure sound. "Overpass duration: two minutes. 51 dBA, with a base of 42. That base is from birdsong and the river in the distance." Gordon Hempton is fighting to save the sounds of silence in Washington state's Olympic National Park -- one square inch at a time.