Tag: landscape

Colorado Desert series, No. 12.

The quietest place I have ever been was an anechoic chamber at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. Every soundwave is dampened, and the only thing you can hear is the air passing in and out of your lungs, and the faint sound of blood squeezing through the capillaries in your ears. A minute in such a place will permanently redefine quiet for you. 

The gullies and gulches that track toward the lower Colorado River at the Imperial National Wildlife Refuge are surely the quietest outdoor spaces I have ever encountered. I walked for hours along the course of a bone-dry wash and heard … nothing at all. There was no wind. There were no birds or insects in motion. And there were precisely no human sounds, except for my own footfalls on the trail, and my own breath, and my own heart beating.  

Colorado Desert series, No. 12.

The quietest place I have ever been was an anechoic chamber at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. Every soundwave is dampened, and the only thing you can hear is the air passing in and out of your lungs, and the faint sound of blood squeezing through the capillaries in your ears. A minute in such a place will permanently redefine quiet for you. 

The gullies and gulches that track toward the lower Colorado River at the Imperial National Wildlife Refuge are surely the quietest outdoor spaces I have ever encountered. I walked for hours along the course of a bone-dry wash and heard … nothing at all. There was no wind. There were no birds or insects in motion. And there were precisely no human sounds, except for my own footfalls on the trail, and my own breath, and my own heart beating.