What was it like: being in the most silent place you have ever been?

The night that I moved to Whidbey Island, we arrived with the last load about 8:30 P.M. It was pitch black dark outside, and there were no lights anywhere.

The whole peninsula was absolutely silent.

It was amazing. I loved living there.

P.S. Whidbey Island has the largest air exchange of anyplace in the U.S. The air was absolutely pure and fresh as well.

On a mountaintop between Sedona and Flagstaff. It was pitch black and so silent it hurt my ears.

I experience silence in two places. One is up in my cabin in the mountains during the winter months. You can almost hear the snow fall it is so quite. I love it there and during that time. I love to sit and meditate. There are times you could swear you could hear your own heart beat. It brings me peace and makes me feel a part of this world and the Universe.

The next place is my room that I built. I built a sound proof room that is my meditation place where I go to answer questions and get connected. It is wonderful in there. There are rules for entering and one is without shoes and one should shed awful, nasty thoughts. It is decorated very serenely and just being there helps me find peace from the world outside.

Sitting outside the hotel room stranded at Indianapolis Airport on the evening of 9/11…..absolute deafening dead silence. Freakiest damned thing I have ever experienced in my life. I think the whole world came to a stop that night.

Silence makes me go crazy after a while. It’s cool to relax, but when I’m in silence all the time, I want to blast music and car horns and train tracks as loud as i can so I don’t feel so alone. Where I’m living right now is silent. I hate it. At first it wasn’t so bad, but now it’s just like I want to put my head next to a car engine

I’m used to silence outside at night in this neighborhood and the past few others in which I’ve lived. So I don’t hate it or like it; I’m used to it.

Now we are talking no birds singing, no wind rushing, no water running, no kids playing in the back ground and a silence that is almost too quite. I love it that way where you can almost hear your heart beat. At times I think I really can and you feel like you can hear the snow fall.

The house I grew up in. It’s in the suburbs. At night, it was so silent I wanted to scream just so there’d be something to hear.

God, I hate the suburbs.

I love walking deep into the woods, away from roads or any other man made things. Nature is far from silent, but its a peaceful pleasant type of sound.

Sometimes I can get that on my winter walks.The only sound I hear is my footsteps.It is beautiful and very peaceful.
I do however,bring a trumpet along in case the silence becomes deafening
;)

Joshua Tree at 3am. I hate it. Silence is so deafening. In the absence of other sounds I hear a loud hiss. I can’t sleep with that sound. I need some extraneous noise to stop my brain.

In the backyard of the house I grew up in. No neighbors, woods all around with a perfect view of the sky. I welcomed the silence then and I still do. I crave silence. Those moments there shaped me. I was able to let my brain run wild and feel a type of freedom in those moments. I miss it.

I think the quietest place I’ve ever been was my campus after an ice storm. There were no cars on the road an account of the ice making it too dangerous to drive. The whole place was deserted, classes were cancelled and the dining halls were closed so there was no one walking around. A friend and I went to the oldest part of campus where there is a big field. It was so eerily quiet; the only thing I could hear was the sound of my own breathing and of the snow crunching beneath my feet. It was so beautiful and was such an enlightening experience. It’s hard to believe that with over 6 billion people in the world it could be that quiet and lonely.

It was 100% silent for about half an hour after the mcas test. I can’t recall what was going threw my mind. But it was nice. I felt good, happy, and relaxed. Also waking up in the middle of the night I often stay awake just to enjoy silence, but there is always some sort of small pesky noise.

I find silence in the Scottish mountains, the best kind of silence. If you listen to it you will hear the cry of a distant bird, the sound of running water or the whisper of the wind in the grass.

There are many places in Australia where you can experience true silence and true darkness as well. It was scary to me at first after having spent most of my life on the east coast of the USA. There were 2 times here though that stand out in my mind one was somewhere between Adelaide and Broken Hill. There was a sign pointing off on a dirt track saying aboriginal rock art 40k. There was little traffic on the main track and when we turned off it looked as if there had been no cars there for a hell of a long time. We drove and drove and finally reached the parking area, using the term loosely. We still had to hike a distance until we reached these piles of huge rocks around a dried up creek bed. A lot of the rocks formed overhangs and underneath was the art. It was amazing, hand prints of all sizes, little baby up to big man, all sorts of paintings of people gathering and the food they ate. After we looked at the paintings we sat there in the shade and honest to goodness you could almost hear the kids voices as they played and the didge and clapstick music as they danced and ate. It is eerie and haunting. With absolutely no real noise anywhere.

Second time was driving through Kakadu National Park late one night. I was all alone in my jeep with the top off and the wind blowing through my hair. I pulled over to have a walk around the car and when I turned off the head lamps I realized the darkness was so complete and intense that I absolutely could not see my hand in front of my face. It was utter sensory deprivation, visually anyhow, the sounds of the night were all around me. When I looked up I could see gazillions of stars but they didn’t shed enough light to see anything around me. It was totally scary and exciting and exhilarating all at the same time. I couldn’t stand it for too long though, I had to hop in the jeep and get those headlights on.

Another one of my favorites is camping on the beach at night when all you can hear is the ocean. Lots of opportunities here, one of the reasons I love it so much.

just last week I went to a group Tai chi class,
for the first ten minutes we sat in complete silence.
It was uncomfortable but intriguing in a very different way than
I’m used to. Definitly a change of pace for me.

The sounds of creepy crawly creatures and wild game can be quite noisy at times.

Underwater. “I should surface soon.”