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Now and then,
I have had occasion to converse with
passers-through, here in the little burg. It's surprising, how often
they remark about the quietness. Most of them wonder how we can bear it. Such
comments make me laugh! Had they spent a day or two here, they
would begin to actually hear the cacophony of life.
I suspect that people who live in cities,
crowded in on top of one another, do not hear most of the sounds
around them. There is traffic, and the noise of
"civilization", but if they heard it all, it would doubtless
drive them mad. You must be a bit mad to live in those concrete cages,
anyway ...
Here in the "quiet" Big Empty,
people are attuned to all sorts of sounds. We know the distinctive
sound of each of our neighbors' cars. I don't have to look out the
window to see who is passing by; I know by the cadence of the engine.
In daylight, bird calls, dogs barking -- I know most of them by their
voices, too. Sometimes, I hear cattle cry. And the wind. At night,
coyotes sing along with the wind. In summer, crickets. I hear them. It
is all a part of the experience of living away from the city. I
treasure this -- not quiet -- constant music.
The past few days, there has been an
unfamiliar rumbling in the air, coming from the other side of our
western mountain "boundary". Regular, but not constant. At
first, we thought it was sonic booms -- but there are too many,
repeating many times in a short span of time. I can almost feel the
ground shaking during the booms. My dog does not want to go outside.
My father cannot hear the clock alarm, but he hears that rumbling.
We have speculated that it must be some
type of blasting; maybe a new road or a mine site opening up. That
might explain the increase in traffic up over the hill, hauling all
manner of mysterious industrial equipment. Large drilling machines,
and other things that my father recognizes (but I do not).
Tonight, the wind is intense. Whistling
and whining. Booming.... and there seems to be an excessive amount of
air traffic. Is it Californians, fleeing the fires? Or something more
ominous yet?
The past few years, the sense of foreboding
has increased for me. No longer alarmed, so much as resigned to
the inevitability of it, I frequently feel like a bedside companion to
a terminally ill friend. All I can do now, is wait -- and
document with photographs; the end of the world as I have known her.
Big changes are in the wind.
(I sort of wish Dad and I hadn't watched that
Nostradamus program, last night ............. )
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| Monday, October 29, 2007 10:17 PM
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