Getting Away To It All

Like most people on their first day in a new job, I was keen to impress.

The leadership of the company had flown from Los Angeles to New York to make me feel welcome, and in return I wore my best set of clothes, a bright smile, and some brand new shoes. I was met at the entrance to the office, where everyone shook hands, and exchanged the traditional amount of words to say how excited we all were for this new partnership.

Everything went extremely well, until I took three steps into the office, where the hardwood floors and my brand new shoes began to argue.

Squeak SKWUNCH squeak!

For some odd reason, the two shoes made different sounds. My left foot opted for the more established and time-honored “squeak”, in the way that leather loves to do when it’s new. This would have been troubling in itself, were it not for the more rebellious right foot, which let out a cross between a squeak and a wet crunch. Imagine a very gassy, bloated mouse being sat on by a large, tired sea lion. Definitely remarkable, but certainly not the first impression I wanted to make to my new employers who'd entrusted me with the success of their East Coast branch.

"And over here is the kitchen..."

As the opening tour continued, the only way to suppress the sound of symphonic feet was to put all of my weight onto the back of each heel and walk with my toes off the ground, which I did when I thought that my executive guides were not looking. The whole sight was farcical, but I somehow made it through the day without anyone asking me if I had recently fractured a bone.

I'm surprised no one noticed the ridiculous sounds. Either my new bosses were being extremely polite, or I might be over-sensitive to noises. 

During the recent Coronapocalypse, I've been documenting my home gardening efforts (see all previous articles). Tomatoes are now growing from the salad slices that I planted in the spring, and even MORE tomatoes are producing from the replanted piece of vine that snapped off in a recent storm. Similarly, large peppers are now hanging off a plant that I grew from an old dried up cayenne pepper that I found, abandoned at the end of last season. Popcorn cobs are developing, along with strawberries, carrots, radishes, raspberries, basil, parsley, bok choy, garlic, mint, sunflowers and chives. 

My crops are not large, but tending to them has been a wonderful, calm shelter in the COVID-19 world of home confinement. I live in White Plains, New York, which is green and suburban; even before the Connecticut Puritan settlers came to colonize the area in the 17th century, it was used as farmland by the indigenous Weckquaeskeck tribe. I’m not a skilled gardener; the land just seems to naturally know what to do, and how to grow things well.

And along with the suburban landscape around me, there are also the suburban sounds.

As I type this, my neighbor is pushing a loud lawnmower back and forth across his yard. Meanwhile, some children are playing a game with water that involves screaming. The low hum of air conditioner compressors cooling peoples’ homes, competes with the constant chirp of birds, crickets, squirrels and chipmunks, together with the ongoing scolding rebuke of a teenage neighbor, who is always doing something to make his parents shout at him.

All these sounds seem extra loud today, since we have just returned from a few days away in the mountains.

When my wife first suggested a vacation, I looked around my beautiful home garden and wondered why anyone would need to leave. Then she showed me a map, displaying the amazing, beautiful green spaces available to us in upstate New York, and so we packed up the car and headed for the town of Tannersville, in search of some breathtaking natural beauty.

The town itself is very small - only about 1.2 square miles - but the house we rented backed onto a wild forest that seemed to go on forever. My son and I stared at it, then at each other, and then back to the woods, wide-eyed and longing to explore. Then a gray fox emerged and leapt onto the top of a woodpile, to declare that we were well and truly in the wilderness.

During our trip we hiked to a waterfall of cold, clean water and walked along a creek to a secluded watering hole where we swam and played on a slide carved out of the rock. We climbed high, to find a spectacular view from the side of a mountain. We looked up at the night sky each evening, to see a display of stars shining brighter than any of my family had ever seen. 

The journey into our back yard forest took me to an unexpectedly magical place. At first, everything looked like a conventional woodland, with a usual array of tall trees, large rocks and soft, vegetation covered ground. However, as we walked deeper in the wilds, the whole area became covered with a beautiful carpet of radiant green moss. Contrasted inside the moss, we discovered bright orange salamanders, golden colored mushrooms, silver spiders, and an assortment of frogs leaping out of our way as we walked. 

I'm not sure who noticed first, but apart from the feint trickle of water, and the rustling of leaves, the whole forest was beautifully calm and quiet. No loud sounds from birds, animals or insects; even the frogs held back their croaking chorus, and landed quietly on the moss as they hopped around. 

In a 2017 study, scientists proved what I think we already know; that human brains react very positively to the sounds of nature. Our "Default Mode Network" is the part of our brains that remain active while a person is resting, and when it is exposed to artificial noises like traffic or construction, it turns inward. This is not good, because an inward focus is also observed in people with clinical depression, high anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder. 

The sounds of nature turn our attention outward, allowing us to be wide awake and focused, and at the same time relaxed. The "fight-and-flight" reaction triggered by dangerous and stressful situations is at rest, and the system responsible for good metabolism and recovery becomes active.

Interestingly, the study inspired the research scientists to spend part of their day away from science, to experience the calming sounds of nature; birdsong, a babbling stream or leaves rustling in the wind.

That seems like “sound” advice.

(Sorry – just spent a few days away with my family, so I’m full of dad jokes right now!)