There Is No Quiet Place in America

Well, almost no quiet place. I realized this when I made a pilgrimage to one of the quietest places I can remember ever having visited: Mantle Rock, a Nature Conservancy site in northwest Kentucky.

Mantle Rock is one of the largest natural rock arches in the eastern United States. But in 1838 it was also on one of the main routes of the Trail of Tears. Numerous contingents of Cherokees, forced (in some cases literally) at bayonet point to leave their homes in the east and walk to what is now Oklahoma. My great great great grandmother, Elizabeth Hildebrand, was in one of these groups, the Hildebrand Contingent, which camped for weeks near Mantle Rock in the winter to wait for the Ohio River to open up so they could ferry to the Illinois side. Certainly, at that time, there was plenty of noise.

When I visited, in late June 2019, Mantle Rock was utterly quiet. The paved road had almost no traffic, much less traffic than a typical dirt road in Oklahoma, where I live. I was the only visitor that morning. Maybe one airplane flew overhead. There wasn’t even any wind. I was alone with the trees, my thoughts, and my severe tinnitus.

The sign [see image] indicated that I was standing on a preserved remnant of the original Trail of Tears, most of which has now become private property and highways. It was 780 miles long and most Cherokees walked the entire way. I looked down the trail into the woods. Suddenly I was overwhelmed by emotion, and wept briefly as I remembered all that I have read about this dark period of American history.

This almost certainly could not have happened if I had been part of an American tour group where the tour guide must keep everybody happy all the time, and where everyone speaks loudly. Or if this site had been on a highway that had even a little bit of traffic. At large highway convenience stores, American families debouch from their cars and lumber inside to get sweet snacks, a posse of noise riding in. Americans love vehicles that make lots of noise. These vehicles waste energy, for every bit of noise represents energy that does not help to propel the vehicle forward. Efficient cars are quiet. Or if this site had been under the flight path of small, loud airplanes, such as my house in Oklahoma, where pilots enjoy making noise while the residents below receive no compensation.

Part of being quiet is to move slowly. If I had rushed forward in a hurry the way most Americans do, I would never have noticed the diversity of trees along the path, and how some of the tree species grew in different places than others: sugar maples down by the arch, post oaks out by the edge of the prairie. You cannot look and think if you are talking loudly about something other than the natural world surrounding you. The voices of the titmouse birds could not compete with a loud American larynx.

In America it is okay to make a lot of loud electronic noise at a party, heedless of the effects on the neighbors. This is not the way it is in France, where if a party (in a rented facility) makes too much noise, the electricity automatically shuts off; or where the clink of glass bottles at recycling facilities is supposed to be limited to daylight hours, to avoid “nuisances sonores” (see the text in red).

In France, and probably other foreign places I have not seen, respectful moderation of sound is the social norm, reinforced by law which needs seldom to be enforced.

I have to sleep with noise—a fan and/or a white noise generator, to hide the constant noises around me at home. I am so accustomed to this that I did not notice my daily exposure to noise until I stayed in a very noisy motel, and when, the very next day, I encountered utter silence on a remnant of the Trail of Tears.

Most American Christians think that God has spoken to humankind. But they believe this occurs only through the booming voices of big-time evangelists, who rush through sermons so fast that nobody has time to think, “Now, wait a minute, what is your justification for saying that?” Modern Christians would never, like Elijah, hear God in the “still small voice.”