Village Books in Historic Fairhaven

Washington State is home to the only non-tropical rain forest in the northern hemisphere—in part of Olympic National Park.  Here, in arguably the quietest place in the country, One Square Inch is physically located.  Marked by a small red stone sitting on a log, a location that Emmy Award-winning sound ecologist Gordon Hempton hopes to protect from noise pollution along with a much larger area of the park.  When his One Square Inch initiative became increasingly threatened by manmade noise, Hempton decided to take a cross-country journey from Washington State to Washington, DC, in his ‘64 VW bus, seeking out the sounds of our nation’s natural habitats and reconnecting with the land.  Alarmingly, he found that natural silence can only be found in fewer than a dozen remote locations.

This the incredible tale of a man on a singular mission to preserve natural silence from the steady spread of man-made noise.  Today, we Americans are seeking out alternative forms of energy, focusing on recycling, and minimizing our carbon footprint on the earth, yet no legislation is in place to protect one of our most vital (and fastest-diminishing) natural resources—silence.  “We’ve reached a time in human history when our global environment crisis requires that we make permanent lifestyle changes,” Hempton writes.  “More than ever before, we need to fall back in love with the land.  Silence is our meeting place.”

Gordon Hempton is an acoustic ecologist and Emmy Award-winning sound recordist who has provided audio services to Microsoft, Discovery, National Public Radio, and other organizations, and who has been profiled by major media including CBS News Sunday Morning, NPR, and People.

One Square Inch of Silence: One Man's Search for Natural Silence in a Noisy World (Hardcover)

By Gordon Hempton, John Grossmann

$26.00

ISBN-13: 9781416559085
Availability: Special Order - Subject to Availability
Published: Free Press, 03/01/2009

---