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One Square Inch Of Silence: One Man's Search For Natural Silence In A Noisy World (2009)

by Gordon Hempton(Favorite Author)

3.69 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

1416559086 (ISBN13: 9781416559085)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Free Press

review 1: A fascinating and thought-provoking journal of Gordon Hempton's effort to protect one square inch of quiet within a designated spot of the Olympic National Park.In memoir fashion, Hempton describes a little of his pilgrimage experience to the quietest place within the park, as well as his journey across country (from West Coast to Washington, DC) hoping to advocate for less human-generated noise ~ at least in designated parks and wildernesses.I learned alot about the generation of human noise, how it impacts humans, and how starkly it adversely impacts other species. Having read the book, I'm now more aware of the noise around me.As much as I enjoyed the reading, I was disappointed that a self-identified acoustic ecologist wasn't more self-reflective about his own noise g... moreeneration. 1) He drives to the shore to body-surf as a way of cleansing before he goes into the forest. He drives in the opposite direction in order to prepare to protect the quiet?! 2) He drives a VW van, which has its own problem with noise generation. Then he admits that he has a second, much newer SUV. Seriously?! Two big polluters in terms of sound! 3) He takes the VW on a two-month pilgrimage, which is noise enough. But then he blithely takes a commercial flight back to his home twice during that trip, in order to attend some family celebrations. Yet there is no mention of how much noise his own convenience causes.The other issue I have with him from an ecological standpoint is that he uses "silence" and "quiet" interchangeably. Only humans generate noise? And reducing human noise leads toward silence (instead of a quieter ecosystem where other natural sounds can be heard? That's just like describing a piece of land as a "vacant lot," when in fact it is quite robust and thriving with grasses, small mammals, insects, and worms ~ it isn't vacant ~ and to say that it is vacant is only to perceive it with respect to human usage.If he had been just a little more self-aware about his own lifestyle generating noise ... and just a little more sensitive to using language that isn't entirely anthropocentric, this would have been a 5-star read.
review 2: Non-fiction. A personal journey by a likeable sound recording expert, and a compelling case for adding natural silence to the ecological agenda, especially in national parks. It looks at how our noises intrude everywhere so that we've gotten away from listening to nature in favor of just looking at it. Besides our noisy interference with such things as bird mating and nesting (a quarter of U.S. birds are in decline), this was interesting: in the absence of human-made noise, people can hear a tsunami coming in plenty of time to get to safety on foot, that's how wonderful the evolutionary gift of our hearing is in the right setting. less

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