The Sound of Silence

Lately I've been longing for quiet and my hunger for this serenity grows in the summer when the windows are open on hot summer nights. I am referring to the kind of quiet that you can actually hear. Anyone who has spent time in the middle of nowhere knows what I mean by that. I grew up in northern Manitoba sixteen miles from town on a gravel road. You could hear a vehicle coming from two miles away. Some nights if the wind was blowing in the right direction, it would carry the lonesome call of coyotes from across the river. On a nice fall evening, there was the steady hum of combines from neighbouring farms. Then there was the sound of nothing at all, the silence of a predawn morning or the quiet in the dead of night. These were the sounds of my childhood. There were no squealing tires, no loud motorcycles, no sirens, no thud of music from a passing car. By my description, you'd think we live on the mean street of some sprawling metropolis. That is not the case. We are on a little acreage in Langley but even so, the voice of suburban hustle filters in. There are, however, two sounds in my environment that I do like - the plaintive whistle from the 10:30 PM train as it journeys through Langley and the crowing of a distant neighbour's rooster each and every morning. I accept that I am not likely to find myself living in the kind of quiet that I long for any time soon but there are still those magical moments went the city seems to be still. Those moments are for my enjoyment.

PS The photo is of the elevator in my hometown.