Silence is Golden

For 21 of my 35-year working career, I worked for an oak furniture manufacturer. At one point during the time I was there, the company boasted 324 employees.  It was a busy place. 

I had a wide range of duties.  If I wasn't on the shop floor somewhere, I was in my office and on the phone with sales reps, customers, vendors, or others. I also had daily meetings with the management team and sometimes with employees. 

If the machinery in the place had produced product in proportion to the volumn of noise it produced, my profit sharing account might have grown much faster than it did. And you would have agreed, if you could have been listening in on many of my calls, that some sales reps and customers didn't lag far behind machinery when it came to making a ruckus.  

That's one of the reasons why I loved the yearly white-tail deer hunting season. I would always take some time off and spend it in my hunting blind, 3.35 miles (as the crow flies) from the factory.

I would usually spend the entire day in my blind. Enjoying the silence. One season, I sat from before light, to after dark, five days in a row, and did not see a single deer.  Finally, when a  buck showed up and I decided to harvest it, part of me regretted ruining the stretch of silence I had been enjoying with my gunshot.   

I was thinking of those days today as I walked the almost vehicle-free streets of our neighborhood. Had I decided to walk down the center lines of the streets on my two mile walk, rather than to have just taken some of the pictures you're about to see from the centerlines, I would not have had to move aside very often. 

We are back on level three for Covid. We're lucky we didn't get put back on four. There have been a couple areas of outbreaks after 102 days with no new cases. Apparently, the government feels that they can isolate the sick without resorting to a complete shutdown of the country again. 

But they are not getting soft on Covid. If a family is found to have a member with Covid, that entire family is required to move to a quarantine hotel until they all test negative.  

But back to my photos. Any cars you'll see in them are parked. The silence is almost complete. No sound of local cars going by, no distant background hum from the motorway, and no jets circling the city as they descend toward the airport. 

The electric trains are running at a reduced frequency. Their far away clackety-clack is more noticeable now against the quiet. It's about all there is to hear twice an hour.  

Since the situation demands it, I'm glad to embrace the respite from traffic. I will take my walks each day and try to pay attention to what lessons the silence might make audible to me. The sunlight today is golden. So is the silence. 

I'm pushing 69 years and I think I've learned a thing or two in that time. My suggestion to you is to try to find some intervals of quiet time in your own lives. My seasons of silence have done me a lot of good over the years. Consider it.      

Well, I've just learned something the day before I intended to post this....

Jeanne just saw an news article reporting that record numbers of people had descended on Muriwai Beach this weekend, because of this wonderful weather no doubt, but in defiance of the level three restrictions on travel and gathering in crowds.  

And I thought that the streets were empty because all the citizens were cooperating with the government's announcement. Instead I find they're empty 'cause everyone else is at the beach! Hhmmmmppff.         -djf