Items

• 2020-04-02

  The Silence of Nature

  I live in a rural area of southeastern Louisiana. When I first moved here the only thing that you could hear at night was the natural sounds that one would think of when being in the country, but as developments started to move into my area the air was polluted with the sound of cars on the distant interstate. The nights become a harmony of grasshoppers and traffic all mixed into a melody that formed a hybrid of urban and rural life. On the night of April 2nd, 2020 I was enjoying a night of looking at the stars through my telescope. It was a mainly clear night when I closed my eyes and began listening realized that I could no longer hear the cars on the interstate. Louisiana was in the mist of the a very high spike in COVID and lockdowns were in effect meaning there were fewer cars on the roads especially at night. I sat and listened for hours as I was able to hear all the sounds that were once masked by the intrusion of development on my rural area. From about April 2nd until early July this quite remanded at night. It was not until Louisiana started to open up more that the sound of the cars returned to my nighttime symphony. When I look back on the early days of the pandemic this is the memory that stands out and how it will be remembered by me. Though a harsh time in the world and for humanity, the sounds of technology and modernization were drowned out by nature for a time and it made the nights a little more peaceful and less stressful with all that was going on in the world.