Road Noise Isn't Background Noise, Either
These days, learning to love the more-than-human world is more heartbreaking than romantic. But I find more joy in learning to love the birds and keeping company with them in their difficulty than I do in ignoring them. I hope you do, too.
Each week, I provide a gentle turning practice to help us shift our perspective. You may find it helpful to have a journal at hand, but it’s not required. I hope these practices of body and heart bring you peace and connection in the middle of whatever storm is blowing around you at the moment. Today’s newsletter part of my series about connecting with and learning from birds.
Two weeks ago, I wrote about cultivating our attention to birdsong. Knowing the birds better can transform background noise (however delightful) into the song of a friend. This week, I want to tune the attention of our ears a bit differently. I want us to notice road noise.
I passionately hate road noise. Many Alaskan towns aren’t “on the road system.” You can’t drive to them from any major town or from the North American highway system. They have fewer cars per capita than most towns, cities, and villages, of course. (Cars have to be brought in by plane or ship.) I dream of living off the road system. I imagine my dog does, too. He was born in one such village, and he is happiest when he can run around wherever he pleases, visiting neighbors and scrounging for bones in the woods. Sometimes I’m able to make that happen for him, but here in Anchorage, the traffic makes independent dog adventures prohibitively dangerous. I used to feel like driving was freedom, but now I see the world more like my dog does. Being able to get where I need to go without depending on a vehicle feels more free to me.
I recognize I am part of the problem. I could live in a city that is less car-dependent. I could bike more, take public transportation more often… People do it, even in my very car-dependent city. I could manage if needed, but my life would definitely change. For example, I don’t know of any nearby trailheads for hiking that have public transportation access. However hypocritical or disingenuous it might be, I still schlep myself to trails in my car with the goal of hiking away from road noise. My favorite trails are the ones that get me away from it as quickly as possible.
Even so, I didn’t fully appreciate how disruptive traffic noise can be until I listened to birds. More specifically, until I used the Merlin app to identify them by sound. When you record sound in the app, it visualizes what it’s recording. It is incredibly annoying to hear a bird, then look at the app for identification and see only the gray dots of white, rumbling road noise.
It’s annoying to me, but then I imagine the birds, dependent on those noises for information and communication. I read that some species have done well in urban areas only because they have learned to chirp, squawk, and sing louder than the steady drone of human machinery. I assume the birds who can’t compete moved on. Or not. In the United States, approximately 80% of the land is within one mile of a road. (Sources listed at the end of the article.) I can hear a busy road from a mile away in most circumstances. I imagine that my car and my home aren’t insulated against the noise. I imagine having to yell to be heard any time I’m near a road. I imagine the quiet places I can escape to dwindling and shrinking year after year.
For this week’s gentle turning, I want you to find a place where you can hear road noise, unfiltered. This shouldn’t be hard. The easiest thing would be to roll down your window next time you’re driving, removing the barrier engineered for your comfort. Turn off the radio. Listen to the road noise. Pay attention to it. And imagine the birds singing louder… and louder… and louder… to be heard.
I ask myself: what is it worth to me to live outside of the noise? What is it worth to help the birds hear one another? I don’t have a simple answer, but I will keep asking the questions of myself and other people until we find ways to solve them.
This is not a happy exercise. These days, learning to love the more-than-human world is more heartbreaking than romantic. But I find more joy in learning to love the birds and keeping company with them in their difficulty than I do in ignoring them. I hope you do, too.
Read Ed Yong’s An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Among Us for more about how animal’s sense the world differently and how human activities affect those senses.
Check out this Discover Magazine article for a great map of road density across the world.
I call myself an “everyday mystic” because I’ve found that our dominant, human-centered culture is so pervasive, it can take the perspective of a mystic to pierce it. I looked for meaning around me using a spiritual perspective, and I found deeper connection in a hidden world that is more natural than it is supernatural. The purpose so many of us long for is all around us if we choose to look for it. All it takes is a willingness to step outside of the default American perspective, one moment at a time.
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