The world is so noisy! Even if we live in relatively quiet places, we are bombarded by noise thanks to all the pinging and dinging on our phones, the din of terrible news, demands from annoying coworkers…the list can seem endless. So let’s focus on the more quiet side of life — quiet places we can visit or imagine. If quiet creeps you out, not to worry — this episode only lasts 9 minutes, and I talk through most it!
A few resources:
Lonely Planet: The Joy of Quiet Places
In the Earth’s quietest room, you can hear yourself blink (Smithsonian)
Finding Minnesota: Orfield Laboratories (YouTube)
One square inch: a sanctuary for silence at Olympic National Park
Music: Jens East — Daybreak (ft. Henk) www.soundcloud.com/jenseast
Licence: Creative Commons Attribution V4.0
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Listen on YouTube:
Transcription (remember, this is a direct transcription of what I said and is not actually how I write!):
Welcome to 9 Minutes of Wonder. I’m Betsy Hedberg. I hope this podcast will help you rekindle your sense of wonder for this awe-inspiring world. If you like what you hear in the next few minutes, please subscribe and share.
I don’t know about you, but I feel like there is so much noise going on these days, and I’m craving some peace and quiet.
And I mean, I get it. At home I can turn off music and of course turn off the media and put my phone away and just sit. And that’s really nice.
But today let’s talk about quiet for a little bit.
And I’ve been thinking about this also because I went to a bookstore last week and I treated myself to an early birthday present. I wasn’t going to buy anything. And this book was way too expensive, really, in a way, but I just did an impulse buy. And the book is called The Joy of Quiet Places. It’s a Lonely Planet book, and it’s new, and it is beautiful. It’s kind of a small-scale coffee-table book with lots of photos of places around the world that are particularly quiet. And there are places mentioned, some of which I’ll tell you about in a few minutes, but they’re places from around the world, every continent except Antarctica, except I’m sure Antarctica is really quiet there except for the wind. But anyway, these are places that you can actually go because Lonely Planet, of course, is a series of travel books. And I get that it’s kind of ironic if all these quiet places are publicized in a popular book, then maybe they’re not going to be so quiet anymore, but that’s out of my control — I love this book.
But I was thinking as I was looking at it, what does quiet mean anyway? What does quiet mean to me? And you can think about what it means for you. Does it mean completely silent? Are the sounds of nature a part of quiet, like the sounds of birds and a gentle stream, or maybe a waterfall? Is Niagara Falls quiet? I don’t think so. But what does quiet mean to you? What is acceptably quiet versus just too much noise?
Many years ago, I went on a retreat at the beautiful, beautiful Gethsemani Monastery in Kentucky. But the retreat, it was really just outside the monastery in a retreat house. And it wasn’t intended to be a silent retreat. But for me, it really wasn’t much of a retreat at all because there was no silence inside that retreat house. The leaders and the entire group sat around and talked the entire time.
And one evening, I went outside by myself to sit by the pond and listen to the frogs. And even though the frogs were loud, it was really peaceful, and it was so quiet in its own way. And that was really the highlight of my time there. But when I got back to the group, everyone said, “Oh my God, where have you been? We were so worried about you!” And they did not understand why I hadn’t wanted to stay inside and talk. So everyone likes different things. And I like quiet, but not necessarily silent.
And of course, when we’re in a silent situation, that doesn’t mean our minds are turned off and are quiet. I probably don’t have to tell you about how easy it is for your mind to keep going when you’re trying to quiet it down. But after a while in a quiet place, the mind does tend to quiet down. It can take quite a while, though. They say it takes about four days once people are in a wilderness environment to really start to unwind from modern life.
So what is silence like for you? Let’s do a test.
I am going to be silent or quiet for 20 seconds right in the middle of this podcast episode. See what it is like for you. Does it bug you? Do you want to move on to other activities or will you stay with me? Okay, here we go.
[20 seconds of silence]
All right. That was about 20 seconds, right? Thank you for staying with me. Hope it wasn’t too boring or too awkward, but I’m not going to be silent or quiet for the rest of the episode because I want to talk about some of these quiet places on the planet.
So you’ll never guess where the quietest place in the world is. It is in Minneapolis, if you can believe it. The reason it is the quietest place is that it’s a room that engineers have intentionally created to be the world’s quietest place.
There’s an article that I’ll share in the notes from Smithsonian Magazine. It says background noise in the custom-built chamber is actually measured in negative decibels, which means it’s below the threshold of human hearing. This is called an anechoic chamber, which means without echo. So sound doesn’t bounce off the walls or the floor or the ceiling at all, but rather it’s absorbed. And so when people go in there, they mostly hear the sounds of their own bodies, like blinking or breathing or even their heartbeat. And many people actually find that pretty annoying. And they say it’s extremely disorienting in there because we’re used to using the sounds around us to locate our position in space, and you can’t do that in this room. So it’s even hard to stand up in there, and they require visitors to sit down.
I’ll share a video about it also. And in this video, you’ll hear the owner of this room dropping a pin onto a piece of carpet, and the pin sounds kind of loud. And you can visit this room at Orfield Labs for up to four hours for only $600 an hour. But they’re having a sale now for $500 an hour. So call right now and you can make a reservation to go.
A few other places that are particularly quiet are mentioned in this Lonely Planet book that I told you about, and I’ll just tell you about a few of them really briefly.
One is the Ho Valley in Olympic National Park in Washington State. There is actually a tiny parcel of the Ho Valley, which has been designated the “quietest square inch in the United States.” And it’s also one of the darkest places in the country. But apparently that square inch got spoiled because so many people were going there to take their selfies and put them on Instagram that they had to remove the marker.
Another place that’s mentioned in this book is the Mojave Desert in California. And you might think of the Mojave Desert — like the Death Valley area, for example — as being the hottest place, but it’s also one of the quietest places in the world.
Another place mentioned is the Skeleton Coast of Namibia. This is a desert environment on the western coast of southern Africa, where I would love to go someday. I’ll read you a tiny clip from the book. It says, “Surrounded by silence. Once you arrive, memories of conveniences like mobile-phone reception, or of nuisances like urban crowding and traffic noise, fade away and seem as if they belong to life on another planet. The only sound is that of the wind and the waves, broken occasionally by the piercing cry of a gull, and the only moment that matters is now.” That sounds appealing. Really, really appealing.
Another place mentioned in this book is called the Place of Silence in New Zealand. This is in a pristine area of New Zealand’s South Island called Fiordland National Park. And they interviewed somebody who’s very familiar with this place, asking him just how silent is this “place of silence.” And he said “There is simply no unnatural noise. It’s truly the sound of nature. The inner arms of the fjord are calm and the mountains reflect beautifully on water.” And the photos here make it look like paradise.
But we can’t all go to the wilderness all that easily, right? And maybe you’ve been in urban areas that have these really, really special quiet places like parks and libraries and gardens and other places like that. And this book talks about some of those places.
For example, it talks about a place called Postman’s Park in London. And it’s right near St. Paul’s Cathedral. If you’ve ever been to London, you probably know that the area around St. Paul’s Cathedral is constantly busy, swarming with tourists and business people who work in that area. But this little gem of a garden is a place to pause and contemplate. It’s not just a quiet space, but it has a monument called the Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice, which honors extraordinary acts of bravery. I’ve been to London many times, and I had never heard of this place until I bought this book. So I’m going to go there next time.
So again, I invite you to think about your favorite types of quiet places and what other places are quiet. Like underwater is quiet, although if you go snorkeling, you can hear a fish biting at the coral or even boats if they’re around, but it’s still a lot quieter underwater than it is above.
And almost any place is quiet when it’s been snowing for a while. So if it’s been snowing lately, go out and enjoy that quiet.
And I hope you can find some peace and quiet very soon, because I think we all could use some of that these days.
Talk to you next time.