Returning to Nevada, August 15, 2008...The dust pulled up by the truck is killer stuff. I have to keep some speed up to stay ahead of the engulfing cloud which is a little tricky on a winding dirt road with no shoulders. I am now lost in the maze and have backtracked two or three times to see if I can't find a road that continues east and south. I am stubbornly staying away from using the GPS unit, which is a hand-held model. I want to see if using the topo alone will work. Besides, every time I have to stop to read the GPS or to get away from the truck so the compass won't be affected by the metal the dust settles - on me.
I finally reached a low ridge where the dust wasn't so bad. There was a round-up corral and uninterrupted views in all directions. I got out and took a water bottle and the digital camera. This is where I got the photo of the beef skeleton in the earlier post. I found a small outcrop and sat.
Often in places like this you expect it to be quiet and are surprised by the insect hum or other background environmental noise. I wasn't surprised to learn that you carry some noise with you - that after driving or riding a horse or running or walking it takes a few minutes for your inner ear and nervous system mechanisms to turn off. When that finally happens the low-range noise around you can crescendo in a startling way. So I waited. Nothing.
In Sedona, Arizona, there are people who believe the earth itself makes a noise, a sound you can hear, a vibration that you can even feel in moments like this. In Taos, New Mexico, it has become iconized as the Taos Hum and can be googled as such. Scientists have recently pinned vibrations to the north Pacific in winter and the Atlantic off Brazil in the summer on wave action in the two oceans.
I was hearing and feeling nothing. Then a very faint whistle of far off wind and more silence. Finally, as if some unseen hand was turning the terrestrial volume knob, the insect noise became discernible, then more wind sounds.
I have to check this out. I don't know if I caught a convergence zone in the waves of sound that canceled them out, or if it was a 40-second nap time for living things and the wind. It was a wonder.
