Well, it’s 17:54 and if I don’t start to write something now, this little pop-up newsletter will be off to a perfectly typical start for me. (Manu would likely be upset with me, too, and he then may not finish my website.)
This is Cody Schultz, and I’m starting Natural Conversation off with a bit about noise.
Eric Bennett writes, “If our environment is quiet enough, our senses are amplified. But the environment we live in is not getting any quieter. The world is only getting louder” (Space, Stillness, Silence, 2024). If I hadn’t realized this before, I most certainly realized it today.
I took Emmie the pup (pictured) to a local woodland, not twenty-minutes from my home. We’ve romped through these woods many times before, and I’ve created quite a few photographs here, as well. Photographs that few would hang on their walls and that fewer, yet, would understand. But no matter — today was not a day for deliberating on audience or photographic pursuits. Today was a day for walking along mountain bike trails with my dog, celebrating her second year on this earth in the best way I could think to celebrate such an event.
Although I brought my camera equipment with me, I decided instead to carry only my day-bag, packed with paraphernalia for a different project I am working toward. This meant any and all photographs would be taken with my phone and none would appear in my portfolio. No worries there.
As Emmie and I walked, stopping here and there for a sniff or two, we watched the leaves flutter in the breeze. We listened to the birds sing their melodies and the trees crackle as they swayed. Beneath my feet, twigs and small branches snapped, and the mud squished as I struggled, in spots, to maintain my footing. Despite the heatwave the past few months, the ground was overflowing with water from the past night’s storm. This back and forth is not in good favor, least of all for the vegetables in my garden.
There were other noises, too. Noises that are not made my bird or tree, by heavy foot or soaked trail. Noises made by man and the creations man has brought to life.
Most immediately — and most annoyingly, though I did nothing to fix it — was the plastic thumping of Emmie’s poop bag dispenser attached to my bag. Just beneath my waist, my keys jingled with every other step, a reminder that, eventually, we must return to the car and go home. My feet, when not slipping around in mud, stomped away, my boots heavy against the ground. Ahead of me, the tags on Emmie’s collar clinked against one another. Her odd noises — a mix between light choking, coughing, and panting — led the way along the winding trail.
Outside of our control were noises made my machine: cars roaring along the road, fisherman yelling to one another as their small boats pass by, planes soaring overhead.
While the noises Emmie and I made could have been lessened, to an extent, there was nothing — is nothing — we can do about the machines and those around us. This is an issue not strictly within my local woodland but, now, all throughout the world. No matter where we find ourselves, noise shall follow. It’s too bad it’s often man-made noise, the worst kind of all.
— C