SMITHSONIAN • October 2020
Gordon Hempton, a self-described acoustic ecologist. Hempton has spent nearly four decades capturing what he calls the planet’s “jukebox” of natural sounds. He has recorded the music of insects and owls, mountain ranges and jungles, the rustling of prairie grasses and the echoing vibrations inside a log. Hempton uses the word “silence” to describe what he’s after, even though he isn’t seeking a vacuum. He’s looking for the soundscapes that emerge when human noise disappears—antidotes to the din of a mechanical, beeping world. “Silence is the think tank of the soul,” Hempton told me softly earlier this year. “All religions share and revere silence.”