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Protecting the Endangered Silence

Stop everything.
Listen.
What do you hear? A passenger jet overhead, an air purifier, distant traffic, the scuffle of feet down the hall?
Silence – true silence – is rare.
“Quiet is going extinct,” said acoustical ecologist Gordon Hempton, in a story broadcast on CNEWS, part of the CANOE network. “I wanted to find a quiet place and hang on to it and protect it,” said Hempton who is a man passionate about defending quiet places.
Hempton found that place in 2005 while hiking in Olympic National Park. He ventured off the trail and kept walking until he no longer heard any sounds other than nature.
He marked his finding with a small reddish-brown rock, naming the spot “One Square Inch of Silence.” After traveling around the globe in search of quiet, he says this place has longer periods of natural silence than anywhere he has found.
So, what does the rapid decline of silent places have to do with sleep?
A whole lot.
With our increasingly noisy world, our brains are overstimulated and unable to make the transition to rest, according to the experts. Such transitions happen best in silence. It’s why we use nature sounds and white noise to try to block out the loud neighbors, sirens, trains, and other unnatural sounds keeping us awake.
It’s no coincidence that there’s been a rapid decline in quiet places and a similarly speedy increase in sleep disorders.
So think about it. Do you have a place where you find silence?
How do you try to imitate the quiet Gordon Hempton found naturally?
Directions to Hempton’s One Square Inch of silence can be found on his Web site at www.onesquareinch.org.