Silence

Love the idea of preserving one square inch of silence. The article describes the somewhat unique quest of Gordon Hempton :

He calls his project “One Square Inch of Silence.” Following leads, crisscrossing the country, he searched for one square inch where he could listen for fifteen minutes and not hear a human sound but the whisper of his pencil on wet paper.

Further on, the author says :

If he can protect the silence of even an inch, he calculates that, in effect, he will be protecting the natural soundscape of approximately one thousand square miles of surrounding land. It’s a first step toward his goal of preventing the extinction of silence.

Thanks for this beautiful essay, I know it is possible to listen to a river like it were a musical instrument, know that someone is working to preserve silence in nature.