No painting this time, instead it was a treasure hunt. After five years of reading about it, Nancy and I set off to find the now-legendary “One Square Inch of Silence”. Ever heard of it? Designated on Earth Day – April 22, 2005 – to protect and manage the natural soundscape in Olympic Park’s backcountry wilderness, OSI is an independent research project that has a website and board of directors – and has been in the national news on occasion. As the website says: “if a loud noise, such as the passing of an aircraft, can impact many square miles, then a natural place, if maintained in a 100% [human] noise-free condition, will also impact many square miles around it.” In support of this crazy idea, all Northwest commercial airlines have pledged to not fly near it. Gordon Hempton, a acoustic recording engineer and author dreamed this up – and I think it was a great idea waiting to happen.

So, off we went in seach of a little red rock that represents – the one square inch of silence. Beginning at the Olympic National Park Hoh Rain Forest Visitor Center (which is already way the heck up a remote valley and fairly free of human noise anyway) we hiked a little over three miles. Past huge trees, hanging moss, occasional views of the blue-gray glacial-fed Hoh River we went until we reached a significant-looking octopus-hemlock (that’s the top photo). The instructions are to climb through the hole and immediately take a faint elk trail to the left for a few minutes, climbing over blow-downs and then circle a swamp – we did, and there it was:  a little red rock on a mossy log symbolizing much more than it appeared.

The whole point of this is, to me, the sad fact that while we stood beside the log and its sacred rock, we heard people talking far down the Hoh Trail and were aware of a very distant small plane somewhere. And if we experienced that plane and were offended by it, how many other wilderness travelers heard it too? If there isn’t pure peace from human sounds even here in this remote place, a spot people actually work at to make pure, I think it’s hopeless. We’ve lost something we didn’t even realize we had – a place we can go to listen to nothing. On the other hand, the experience of just going there and being aware of all this was immensely rewarding.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

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