Gordon Hempton

Like the aesthetic beauty of natural sound, the theme of the book is subtle - in a way the idea is almost laughable. Given all the problems in the world, who could possibly complain about a single plane flying 18,000 feet over a national park a few times a day? Yet Gordon Hempton, who has won an Emmy Award for his recordings of nature, wants to make us aware of how man-made sounds exist in just about every inch of the continental USA. To draw attention to the loss of the American soundscape, he wants to set aside a single square inch of silence in Olympic National Park, to create a place where no man-made noise intrudes above 20 dba (the lower limit of human hearing).

As Gordon drives across the USA in this sort of travel memoir steeped in the traditions of John Muir, Walden and Aldo Leopold, he records levels with a sound-meter and thus experiences the American coast-to-coast road trip through the hearing sense. The book may even be pioneering a new form of travel/nature literature, experiencing the world through the aesthetic of sound, specifically the lack of man-made noise (including music), and the presence of natural sounds. Few if any authors have ever approached a book in this way before. It may seem overly precious and perhaps a bit odd to some people, like Gordon's rebellious teenage daughter; yet Gordon really does seem to be on to something. Some have said noise pollution is where air pollution was 40 or 50 years ago, a few people concerned but becoming increasingly important.

"The loss of quiet is literally the loss of awareness. Quiet is being lost without people even becoming aware of what they are loosing." This book brings a new awareness.

--Review by Stephen Balbach, via CoolReading (c) 2008 cc-by-nd… (plus d'informations)