The raucous, jack-hammer cacophony of nature.
written by Julie R. Neidlinger 7 comments link this postI went for my evening masochistic mile run and again wondered why people want to move to a rural area for the silence.
I heard no silence. People are so attracted to Thoreau's mythical Walden.
Perhaps it was due to the irritation I felt from swallowing a baker's dozen worth of sand flies while gasping for breath as I chugged down the road, but the noise of nature was anything but silent.
Between the odd soft yipping-barking of the muskrats and the howling of the coyotes, there were also the crickets, frogs, killdeer, owls, mourning doves, sparrows, meadowlarks, black birds, red-winged black birds, barn swallows, mud hens, ducks, Canadian geese - where is this silence I hear so much about?
The only silence here is in the winter when everything has gone away and the world is mute.
Twittering shrieking dive-bombing squawking cooing popping screeching croaking hooting tweeting chirping honking quacking cawing grating yelping howling -
"SHUT UP!" I yelled, swallowing another sand fly in the process. I couldn't even hear myself think with all that racket. "Just shutup!"
A brief moment of silence was quickly followed by some smart-aleck owl wanting to know who I was talking to.
I understand that everything has its place. This also includes bird shot.
::If you're looking for the musical equivalent of the experience described in this post, it would go as follows: Grieg's Morning (from Peer Gynt) interrupted by Khachaturian's Saber Dance (from Gayne Ballet) subsequently interrupted and topped off with the bombastic conclusion of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture. Pretty much like that.::
Labels: nature
Copyright (c) Julie R. Neidlinger 5/31/2006 10:01:00 PM
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7 Comments:
You should be grateful!Driving into Fargo to work everyday, reminds me of a pile of maggots, crawling over each other for the same mouthfull of fecal matter.
By 
, at
1/6/06 07:02
That's, uh, very descriptive.
By 
Julie, at
1/6/06 09:39
sorry about that..... just feeling a little raw this week. By 5:00 I will be back to the twittering shreiking dive-bombing squaking cooing popping shreeching croaking hooting tweeting honking quaking cawing grating yelping howling biteing insects crowing wind and I will be all better....hey! you really should get a bicycle and ride instead of running. Less wear and tear on the bones! PLUS who can not help but smile when on a bicycle?
By , at
1/6/06 11:00
I lived in a rickety old duplex that hung like an old tree over Route 1 in the Washington, DC beltway.
And still South Dakota is the noisiest place I've ever lived.
By girlfriday, at
1/6/06 13:39
LOL!--swamphopper, www.theroughwoodsman.com
By , at
1/6/06 19:40
Who is anonymous? I don't understand the urge to type LOL and then a link to a site that has no apparent relevance to Ms. Neidlinger's post.
By girlfriday, at
2/6/06 00:11
Julie, you should record all that nature noise and sell CDs. There are city folk who miss hearing the birds and critters. "All the sounds of the earth are like music," as the song says.
girlfriday, I don't think swamphopper meant to be anonymous -- he just doesn't have a Blogger identity, so he put his name and URL in the body of his comment.
By MichaelBates, at
2/6/06 02:50
