The Silence

Old Mojave Road
The Mojave Desert, California

I have taken this back road on the edge of the Mojave and stopped near a desert dirt trail. I've driven miles away from the Interstate to a place where my cellphone offers "no service," and my radio is only a mute, crackling reminder that civilization is out of reach from where I stand. I've done this on purpose, one of those spontaneous traveling moments that sometimes possess you, that won't let you go until you give into it and edge past your common sense. I wanted to experience a certain desert phenomenon I'd once read about—to stop along a deserted road and listen for something rare:

Silence...

...but not a 21st century silence. A seventh day of genesis silence. The music of geology. The kind inside planets and stars, not the pallid kind inside me.

Some have described it as a high hissing sound to the ears, like some empty, earthy recording tape. Desert literary guru Edward Abbey described it not so much a silence as a great stillness. I wanted to hear the sound of the earth empty of all movement, and, for a still moment, just a moment, the sound of myself empty of me.

I make myself settle down, calm, quiet. I take a step away from the snap, crackle, pop of the heat on my car's hood. And then another.

And another.

Standing now on the dirt road headed due south before me, I listen for the hiss of nothing.

The wind whips, then dies; I close my eyes...
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The sudden far-off rumble of a longhaul truck breaks the trance, blowing the stillness away.