The sounds Of Silence

A foggy day last week probably seemed a bit bleak to most people but not me. Whirling masses of white gauze-like fog swirled across open snow-covered fields, and it seemed to muffle every sound.

There is something keenly weird and wonderful about a foggy day. The direction of a sound is difficult or impossible to determine, and that's how it seemed that day.

There was no wind, and an all-day warm-up plus the melting snow, made it seem ominous. Trees seemed shrouded and indistinct, and a walk outside proved how easy if could be for someone to get turned around or completely lost in an unfamiliar area.

The weather was pea-soup thick and as silent as a Monday-morning church.

The swirling mists rose from the ground, and I looked toward my neighbors house a quarter-mile away, and it was gone. My wife's elevated hunting coop only 100 yards behind the house appeared and disappeared like a ghost from a Japanese horror movie. It wasn't a day for a cross-country hike.

Sounds seem very strange in the fog, and I heard a hen turkey give a half-hearted short yelp, and the sound seemed to come from all directions before it was swallowed by the rolling globs of heavy fog.

I well remember a time when a heavy fog rolled in off Lake Michigan 30 years ago at Frankfort. I was trolling for brown trout when it drifted in and enveloped me and my boat. I knew where I was and now had to prove it.

The Frankfort foghorn began to blow, and first it seemed to come from off the stern, then off my port bow, and I could just see 10 feet of wake straight behind my boat. I kept my wake as straight as possible, and one eye was on my compass and the other ahead and to all sides.

Easing a boat up near the Frankfort piers in the fog.

A warning bell sounded as it was hundreds of yards away, but I kept my head and held my bearing, and five minutes later at a putt-putt speed, I spotted the north breakwall only 10 feet away. I jammed the boat into reverse, and crept around the pier head and into the harbor.

Another time my late twin brother George and I were casting spoons into Lake Michigan for brown trout on a pea-soup foggy day. It didn't bother us or the fish, but it must have bugged other people. We caught a number of brown trout that day and never saw a soul.

Today, other than the one garbled turkey yelp somewhere in the fog from a roosted bird, there were no sounds. No cars on the road, no happy chattering of chickadees at the bird feeder, and no noisy flushes of mourning doves.

My part of the world that day was deathly silent. It was a strange sense of a wet silence, and it felt like a wet blanket was being wrapped around me. It wouldn't be fun for a claustrophobic person but I loved it.

I walked near the downspout of my eaves, and there was a soft sound. The soft liquid flow of water running down the spout. Then came the soft drizzling sounds of water dripping off the eaves.

A nearby stand of pines looked gnarled and twisted in the soupy mist. I eased the paper from the tube near my mail box, and stood to listen. There was nothing to hear, only the cottony sounds of silence.

Fog produces a strange silence that  I find magical.

Fog muffles and distorts sound. There was nothing to hear, so in its absence, I listened to the delightful silence.

It's a soft hush, as meaningful but directly opposite of noise. No phones were ringing, no hissing of car tires on wet pavement, no one speaking or answering, but just a period of perfect quietness.

It's like being with someone special when words are no longer needed. It's very similar to standing knee-deep in a cedar swamp, the boughs splashed with six inches of insulating snow, and not moving ... waiting for a hound to howl, telling us about the snowshoe hare running in front of it. And yet, there is no hound or hare ... just me and the soft, wet silence.

Some people can't stand quietness. I can, and hunger for it. It's one reason why that day was such a special one in my life. There was no sunrise or sunset that could be seen but I alertly listened to the silence.

 It was a time when my five senses didn't work well. It's impossible to see far in heavy fog; hearing is impossible if there is nothing to break the silence with sound; and I've been in heavy fogs that are every bit as deadly as a white-out in the Arctic.

The lack of anything to focus on, or anything to hear, confuses the brain and our senses. It's difficult to determine one's relationship to up, down or sideways. And, the silence sweeps over you and robs us of any perspective.

I've been in Arctic white-outs, and they come and go within 15-20 minutes. This thick fog would hold all day, and it's impossible to see 25 yards. It's been a good day to spend outdoors, listening to nothing but the sounds of silence. And then I remembered Simon and Garfunkel, and that line from their popular song from years ago.

Those thoughts and my feeling about the absence of sound were very relaxing.

Posted via email from Dave Richey Outdoors