In the Gut of Silence

May 17th, 2008

The silence of the Great Basin night is without compare. The breeze dies down, but persists enough to make you sure that if you were anywhere else, the rustling of leaves, grasses, wind chimes, twigs or other things would break the soundlessness. It seems like a crime to break it. Scraping my metal bowl to clear its insides sends harsh waves into the night, never to return, all to die somewhere in the robust shrubbage that surrounds me for miles in every direction. Some may be lucky enough to raise the head of a coyote, a rabbit, a meadowlark, or the ass-end of a tank-like stinkbug on its mission into the night.


I dare not break it intentionally. I've got a harmonica, in the key of D, packed away in my stuff somewhere. The thought of becomming audibly blind to the silence is intimidating. I don't have the guts.

It's a silence that is so complete that all you can hear is the humming of your head. The ringing whir of who knows what. Brain static.


I can only hope some creature doesn't breach the moonlit peace with a howl, squak, roar, quack, or gurgled groan. I'd likely jump out of my skin or blow a hole in an artery.

I don't have the guts to bare witness to such a breach.




--From a camp in the expansively empty Eden Valley in Humboldt County northeast of Winnemucca, NV