Prayers in gratitude

May the apple limbs hang low with rosy-checked apples.
May the geese have joy in their journey and solace at its end.

May the snow fly thick.

May the springs flow full and the rivers run free.

May the earth forgive our trespasses against it.

May we give the earth time to lick its wounds and recover.

May we never silence another living voice.

May the trees grow tall and the flowers spread their colors over the meadows.

May the songbirds fill the woods as of old.

May the owls meet in parliaments outside my bedroom window for years to come.

May the ospreys fish with abundance and the fish swim in the shadows.

May there be increasing pockets of silence form machines.

May the plastic be cleaned from the seas.

May the summers be cooler.

May the winters be colder.

May the autumns be brighter.

May spring be always the season of joy.

May the oceans stay cold and the glaciers hold their shapes.

May the chickens range free.

May the cows eat grass.

May the lambs cavort in pastures.

May the pigs live in peace.

May every queen bee have her hive.

May every goose find her gander, ever billy his nanny, every hind her hart.

May the rhinoceros live to see another century and more.

May the stars shine bright in clear skies.

May the dolphins play and the whales sound the deep in peace.

May the eagle's eye be sharp, the deer's ear keen, and the bear's nose honed to every odor in the woods.

May the wilds stay forever wild.

May the world and all its living beings thrive and prosper.

Still Obsessed with Noise Issues

    It's all a trade-off, isn't it? I don't like the noise of the washing machine, but I'm willing to endure it for the unmistakable convenience of doing my laundry at home. I will forego the convenience of the heat pump not to have continual motor noise in the house, but I will put up with the occasional starting-up noise of the refrigerator to be able to keep my food cool. Convenience, noise pollution, economy, environmental concerns—balance one against another, and another pops up.

    A heat pump is an efficient way to heat the house and is probably more environmentally suitable than burning with wood, even with a stove that heats efficiently with little pollution, because there is always some smoke. On the other hand, what runs the electrical power that runs the heat pump? Pacific Power uses coal, and even though I participate in its blue skies program, I'm not sure I've offset the use of coal that powers my heat pump. Hard to tell.

    And burning with wood doesn't pollute just from the smoke. A gas-powered chain saw cut down the tree, and even if were a tree already dead, am I not depriving birds and insects of homes and food in that snag and depriving the soil of the rotted wood that enhances it? Probably my two cords of firewood a year don't make much difference in those ways, but it's all a matter of balance. Years ago I read of an old woman in some poor country who walked miles each day to gather her firewood, and how she has to walk farther and farther every year. If "everyone" heated with wood, we, too, would soon run out of wood to heat our homes. Since we heat our homes with electricity, are we still being careful of use, overuse, and balance?

    I'm pretty sure I'll be glad to have the heat pump to cool the house in the too-too-hot days of summers. But which electrical appliance takes more energy, the heat-pump cooling system or the electric fan I used to run for hours during those days?

    It's such a balancing act: work, convenience, air pollution, noise pollution, heat, cooling, the needs of other species, carbon footprints, economy, personal needs, public responsibility. I think there is a way to stay in balance, but the balance must always lean in favor of the environment if we want our conveniences and pleasures to continue.

Quiet places in our lives

     Last week I wrote about preferring the beauty and ritual of fire-building to heating my house with the newly installed heat pump. I spoke from the point of view of ambient silence.

    I do think silence is important, and bigger fish than I are looking to ease the noises in our cities, where decibel levels are far above the recommended limit. But noise pollution—the loud stuff—is only part of the problem. I don't think we are even aware of the difference it would make not to have the constant hum of motors in our lives, however soft they are, however much in the background . 

    George Foy, a journalist and professor at New York University, went on a years' long search for any place on earth free of human-caused noise. He found no such place. Air traffic was the main problem. Noise from planes or helicopters penetrates every spot on earth, including, of course, my own house, where I am so proud of the silence. 

    Rachel Nuwer, who wrote the BBC.com article about finding quiet places, suggests that if you were to sit still and listen, right there where you are now, you would hear the hum of your computer (mine is a laptop and doesn't hum), the ticking of a clock (there are no ticking clocks in my house), the electric murmur of a refrigerator (once an hour or so, for three seconds, at my house) or an air conditioner (which I don't have), or the faint hum of a car passing by. I can hear cars on the road half a mile away, but infrequently. At the moment, in fact, with the window open, I hear only the occasional buzz of a fly or bee, the creak of the wood-burning stove as the fire settles, and—what was that?—a ground squirrel, maybe, scurrying across the deck. 

    And then for a short time this afternoon I could hear the low hum of some neighbor's motorized something, half a mile away.

    This comparative silence at my house on the mountain leaves room for "nature's melodies," which, Rachel Nuwer says, might be what our souls are really craving. There is no place on earth free of human-caused noise, but absolute silence isn't what we need. What we need is to free ourselves of human-caused noise, whenever and wherever we can, and then listen to what the earth is telling us. What we need is to rest our ears in the silence of natural noises. What we need is to take the conveniences electrical appliances give us (heat pumps, for instance) and balance that convenience with the need for quiet spaces in our lives.

    

Ambient Noise

     For forty years I lived on the mountain without electricity. I heated the house with a wood-burning stove, used kerosene lamps for light, and had a small propane cookstove. 

    With no motor noises, it was blissfully quiet at my house. 

    But I paid a price for that blissful silence. Kerosene lamps are messy and smelly and take constant work refilling the lamps, trimming wicks, cleaning chimneys. I hauled propane tanks up the hill on my shoulder. I stacked firewood for the winter, then brought it by the armload into the house, trailing bark and woods debris onto the floor. I chopped kindling. I took laundry to the laundromat. 

    Twelve years ago, when I moved into a new house on the mountain, with electricity, life became smoother and easier. I was happy not to be dealing with fuel. The noise of the washing machine was worth the convenience of washing clothes at home. The refrigerator sits behind a closed door, so its occasional noise is muffled. Life on the mountain was still pretty quiet. 

    And then, last month, I installed a heat pump. 

    A heat pump, I was told, is efficient. It will cool the house as well as heat it. Its hum, I was told, is minimal. Besides, I was finally told (with a bit of exasperation), I can use it only when I want it, with the expectation, I think, that I would want to use it all the time, given its convenience.

    Certainly it is convenient to heat the house at the click of a button or to program the machine to come on automatically every morning, but I still find myself performing the familiar morning ritual, kneeling in front of the stove to light the fire, coaxing the flame into a red-hot blaze.

The hum of the heat pump, I'm finding, is bothersome, after all. I like the silence of the woods around me. I don't ever want to go back to kerosene lamps and propane tanks—I am grateful every day for my electricity. But I'm in no hurry to trade my ritualistic wood-burning stove for the hum of the heat pump. The heat pump is there when I need it (and I'll probably really need it for cooling the house in the summer), and that's satisfaction enough.