The Quiet

People say that big cities are noisy. They say that because they are. As I sit typing this out on my Kindle I hear all sorts of constant, background noise. Aircraft; cars driving by the house; the low hum of machinery somewhere. Even the freeway which is about a half mile north of me is obvious. And this is only Detroit. New York City, Boston, Chicago, Toronto; they're all worse. The D is rather tame by comparison.

It's what you get used to I suppose, but it really makes me like the quiet of the Upper Peninsula all the more. When it's quiet in Hessel, it's quiet, so much so that a car simply passing can startle. 

Even where there's noise, the noise is different. On our way back from the UP State Fair in Escanaba, close to three hours from Hessel, me son Charlie and I stopped at a rest area around 1:30 AM. It was silent but for the waters of Lake Michigan lapping at the sand and rocks beyond the parking lot. Yet those waves, while a little rough, made a soothing sound, almost a rhythm, which enchanted rather than distracted. The sound of the occasional car headed down Forest Avenue next to my house does not compare.

Perhaps it's merely psychological, but I believe that it's only in the quiet that we can touch the ethereal, the numinous, the that which is not us. The quiet isolates; it causes focus, so that we appreciate what connection we have to the unseen which we nevertheless feel. Quiet refines the senses, so that we may find God alongside.