These words and thoughts are from Gordon talking in the interview.
Sounds he talks about when entering into the Hoh rainforest:
cars, human sounds, artificial cloth rubbing on itself..then we head off down the trail...
moss drapery--
twitter of winter wren, high pitched twittering sound 100 feet away--
Hoh River that drains the from the forest, echoing off the far side of the valley, bugling of the Roosevelt elk.
Adrenaline assertion of what it means to be male and wild.
The horizon extends from miles in every direction...the bugling sound is a a magic flute as a result of traveling through the forest; the same acoustics as a cathedral. Nothing shouts importance.
Trying to save a square inch of silence of the log with moss
Well, that one square inch of silence-- i hear the presence of everything...
the trees remind me of miracles... they have happened for millions of years...
what is more profound than silence..not distracted by email, cell phones. Myself is revealed and i know who i am. There are answers in the silence.
Words evaporate.
The hike out is hardly talking at all. If we talk, we talk in a whisper.
Silence is an endangered species and is on the verge of extinction.
Places in nature that never have any noise pollution are almost gone.
Experience of a place. What it means to be in a place. The sounds define that place.
Earth is a solar powered juke box.
Poetics of space... let it exist. Stay open to all the possibilities to being a better listener and open to change. Silence essential to every person's development.
Time to honor silence is an opportunity to feel everything around it.
Be in my being. Joy and reminded of who I am and then I can go out into the day.
Listening is not about sound. Listening is about place. When you listen to a place, you take it all in.
I hear music coming from the land..something as simple as a driftwood log... waves coming in, pebbles moving, entering into a giant sitka spruce log...fibers of the log vibrate from the sound of the waves...the world's largest violin.
Our music is a reflection of who we are, where we are.
Listening between human beings...
Technology and listening...limit my use of cell phone, I don't listen to the radio, I limit my exposure to technology..its all about competition. If I want information, i get it face to face...
Children make their choices based on experience and so that is why it is important to go on hikes into the wilderness...their thoughts will empty out too...
Research shows that in noisy areas, people are less likely to help each other...the explanation goes all the way to silence...what I mean beyond the silence..the context. The higher the ambient noise level and we become cutoff because we are cut off from a level of intimacy from each other...disassociated from others...we're busy not listening to others because we've reached our limit of what we can take in.
Listening is our sense of security. Quiet places are generally safe places. They calm us. Real listening is about being vulnerable....keep your mind open in listening to another person, you can dare to risk what they are trying to say. Feel your own emotional response. Listening in nature helps us to listen to people.
Relationships between self, others, growth, vulnerability...better communicators.
The importance of saving silence...not one place set aside on planet earth from noise pollution...we only need one law to set aside places in national parks that do just that. Quiet reveals what is possible and right.
Silence is not a luxury. It is essential to our lives.
When I go to a quiet place, I get to ask my ancestors questions.
Why have our ears evolved to hear faint bird song? It depended on our taking the right path to follow the sounds for food and water, extended favorable habitat that can also support human life.
"Do you know what it's like to listen to 1,256 square miles when the sun is rising?"
Just be in your being because the answers are there.
True listening is worship...be quiet, be receptive, be present...
Get down, get close, listen.
Gordon Hempton is founder and vice president of The One Square Inch of Silence Foundation based in Joyce, Washington. He's the author of One Square Inch of Silence: One Man's Quest to Preserve Quiet.