I want to share with you a podcast I listened to from Public Radio. The guest was Gordon Hempton, an acoustic ecologist, writer, and producer of recorded quiet. Not silence, mind you, but quiet. I suppose collector of sounds would be an apt description of him as well.

Quiet, as Hempton points out, is becoming almost impossible to find on Earth. He defines a quiet place as one in which it’s possible to find natural sound, uninterrupted by noise, for at least 15 minutes.

Hempton’s recordings of natural sound are very nice. I’m listening to one as I write this post, of surf pounding down a secluded beach in Washington State. I found it on Amazon.com, a 99 cent Mp3 download.

I am profoundly impressed with the man’s insights and enjoyed the interview very much.

http://being.publicradio.org/programs/2012/last-quiet-places/