The Value of Silence

When hiking alone, as I often do, the constant chatter of other hikers signals their approach. Of course, our fellow animals, many graced with better hearing than ours, also know they’re on the way.

When I taught middle school, I would challenge my students to walk without talking during field trips in the spring to listen to frogs. I couldn’t expect their silence to last long, but when it did, the reward for the children would be a pondside chorus of wood frogs and spring peepers.

We are social animals, and we strengthen our social bonds with speech. When I’m outdoors with friends I also yield to the strong human desire to speak. I enjoy the banter, but I know that the noise can dilute the nature experience.

When I’m alone I value the opportunity to listen carefully to the voices of nature. In winter my stillness might allow me to hear the whispers of golden-crowned kinglets flitting through spruce bows searching for morsels of food.

Or I might simply relax to the sound of the wind rustling through pine boughs – a phenomenon called psithurism (pronounced “sith-err-iz-um”). Walking in silence or sitting quietly offers chances to see animals. Sitting by wetlands is productive. Mink, beaver and muskrat swim by, often oblivious to the
human in their midst.

Quiet walking can also be done with a friend willing to suspend the urge to speak for a while. In Florida recently, my partner and I hiked through subtropical forest, far from the madding crowd.

At one point we heard a family of feral hogs squealing in the undergrowth, and we approached quietly, hoping to see them. We didn’t see the hogs, but we did see the likely source of their unease – a bobcat!

Had we been talking, this elusive mammal would have simply melted into the forest, long before we saw it. There is value in silence.