Annoying Noises

Sitting in my outdoor tub on fall nights, after the summer's insects have either died out or are hibernating for the winter, it can get very quiet—especially on those nights when there is no wind. As I sink into my reverie at those quieting times, I find that my hearing extends farther and farther into the distance. We live in a very remote area, so there are minimal traffic sounds—maybe an occasional car chugging up a distant hill, but then it all settles blessedly back into silence.

On these occasions I enjoy picking up on sounds of wildlife, far off in the woods. Whippoorwills call out in the summer night air, various insects sing out in late summer, owls add their periodic hoot, distant foxes and coyotes yip at the moon. All of their sounds are often accompanied by the gurgling creek. On some nights my peace can be disturbed by a far off barking dog, but that intrusion is thankfully infrequent.

Tonight, however, despite the quiet, I’m hearing a periodic and persistent sound of some kind. It's rather distant and rather subtle, so it's hard for me to discern whether it's a wild animal or a yelping dog. It could be a coyote. Maybe even an evening bird? I am thankful that it does not seem to be a machine—their unwelcome noise is a constant annoying drone for me. I hear this sound briefly, every few minutes.

If the source of tonight's sound is indeed coming from wildlife, I will find myself both interested and curious, so I try to tune into it and see if I can figure what critter may be calling out. Am I listening to an utterance from an animal that may be new to me, or a variation on a call from one that I've heard before? Maybe I can learn something new about Nature's critters that inhabit or visit these woods. If that’s the case, I'm tuned in and engrossed. 

But if the sound I'm hearing is coming from either human activity, or a persistent dog, I will feel irritated. Why do I greet wild animal sounds with curiosity and even pleasure, while I consider civilization's sounds to be annoying?

I moved out here in the country over three decades ago, with the objective of getting in close touch with Nature, and to distance myself from what I came to view as an abundance of urban insanity. I have reveled in this natural environment ever since. The plants and animals surrounding me out here have had millions of years to settle into an exquisite balance and beauty. I feel graced to have become immersed in their world and to become increasingly familiar and knowledgeable with its workings. All these critters and plants naturally belong here, and I feel privileged to share their world.

Humans, however, are the new kid on the rural block. We are largely a disturbance—we upset that balance. We make too much noise, pollute our surroundings, and use our power to dominate. We bring our dogs with us and either fence them or tie them outside. Left alone and bored, they bark incessantly. Sitting in my tub in tonight’s evening's hush, I am disturbed by that dog, while its “owner” likely sits indoors, planted in front of a blaring TV—oblivious to the unhappy dog's howls.

On this night, I eventually decide that I'm not hearing a coyote, but a monotonous, ceaseless dog. So I'll truncate my bath, hoping that the next tub soaking may be longer, accompanied by only Nature's songs.

Minuscule Meteorite?

I was reposing in the outdoor tub recently, deep into a meditative state, eyes shut, when there was a sudden PING!, as something impacted the metal stove pipe above me, and then bounced to the ground. The alarming event began with that metallic PING!, followed by a gentle “plop,” as the object fell to the ground, beside the tub.

Startled, I sat up and immediately began to puzzle over what was the cause of this abrupt sound that broke the gentle silence of the night. There are trees overhead, but it is the wrong time of year for them to drop seeds—besides, their seeds are not very hard or dense. This PING! was caused by something hard—like a stone or a piece of metal.

Could it have been a bird dropping some sort of a projectile in my direction? I doubt that, because if it were a bird, it would have dropped a nut or nut shell—which also would not have caused this metallic PING! And certainly a bird who dropped a poop bomb on me would have generated at best just a quiet “plop.” No, this thing was stony or metallic like.

After having pondered all the possibilities that I could dream up, I was forced—like Sherlock Holmes—to conclude it was likely caused by a minuscule meteorite. (The reader might remember that Holmes's investigative technique was to consider all possibilities, then rule them out, one by one, until the sole remaining prospect must be the answer.) Thus, I was forced to come the conclusion that my PING! was the tiny remains of a meteor that had entered Earth's atmosphere, having burned off most all of itself, except that tiny rock-like core that we call a meteorite.

Now, I realize that the chances of a meteorite landing on my stove's metal pipe are vanishingly small. But people have had them land nearby, or even drill a hole through the roof of their house! If this was a meteorite, and anything larger than a grain of sand, and had fallen a few feet father west, it would have drilled a hole through me! I am grateful.

Most meteors are tiny grains of rock, and never reach the ground as meteorites, before they burn up in the atmosphere. A precious few land as fist-sized rocks or even chunks of iron. Some 65 million years ago a monster meteorite (10-15 km or 6-10 miles in diameter) plunged to Earth and sent the dinosaurs to their doom. I should be thankful mine was so minuscule. But then again, could it have been a bird that shed a gallstone, as it flew over? Back to my Holmesian inquiry.

Brain Beliefs

Our brain is an amazing device that receives an incredibly wide variety of sensory inputs—far more than we could ever interpret—and then distills all that data into a useful representation of the world around us. Evolution has taught the brain which kinds of information are relevant for our survival, and which to ignore or discard. Previous hominid species who went extinct must have possessed brains that were not quite as accomplished at this abridging task; allowing us humans to dominate.

I've written before of the amazing ability of the brain to receive differing and even conflicting messages from our fragmentary visual system, and still manage to create a stable, reasonably accurate visual version of the world around us. Although the process may not be all that accurate, it is utilitarian, it does the job well, and it keeps us alive and functional; which is the primary thrust of evolution.

Here's another example of how our brain processes the data delivered to it—in the interest of keeping us alive and thriving. We hear a lot about living in the moment—of responding to what is happening right now, rather than focus on what happened in the past, or might occur in the future. “Be here now” is an admonition that makes sense; attempting to keep us attentive to the present, to respond intelligently to the moment, rather than drifting off to the past or future.

But it turns out that our brain cannot actually attend to the moment. So the wisdom of evolution has taught our brain instead to create a three-second average of the overabundance of information it has just received. What the brain responds to—what it believes is reality—is an averaging or smoothing of all the data that's come in, over the last three seconds. 

This is brilliant! If it was not the case, we'd be wildly oscillating between instantaneous peaks—causing us to overreact to them—followed by instantaneous valleys—causing us to underreact to them. In the process we’d miss something crucial. We'd be endlessly flipping back and forth between tumult and indolence—experiencing wild and chaotic oscillations.

Instead, my brain smooths out all that vacillation—giving me a steadier view of my world. As a result, I’m less reactive to the extremes and more responsive to that three-second average. It's more conducive to my survival. My brain allows me to pay attention to that average.

So my experience of the moment is not the wildly-fluctuating moment, but a calmer version of reality. Evolution has brought about a situation that gives rise to my brain responding not exactly to momentary reality, but to a filtered and steadied version that keeps our species going.