"Listening is worship"

Gordon Hempton is fighting to save the sounds of silence in Washington state’s Olympic National Park — one square inch at a time.

Diane Daniel | July 2008 issue

We’ve now reached our first stop, the campground at the Hoh Rain Forest, the park’s most popular section. We pick a spot next to the rushing river. Clouds hang low, and in the distance snow covers the highest treetops. Outside the van, we add extra layers for wind and rain, but waterproof pants are frowned upon. “They make too much noise,” Hempton says. “Swish-swish-swish.” He’s the only person I’ve seen carry an umbrella in the woods.

As we head toward the visitor centre and the start of the trail, a gentle walk through the Hoh, Hempton stops abruptly. “Do you hear that?”

I don’t.

“That buzzing sound. Listen.”

Finally my ears lock in to the faint but irritating hum of a generator.

“Since they lost power in a storm, the park has used a generator for electricity. You can’t hear it from One Square Inch.”

Before heading into the woods I stop at the visitor centre, where two rangers stand behind a desk. “Do you have any information on One Square Inch of Silence?” I ask. One ranger looks at me blankly; the other says, “What information do you want? I don’t have anything you can take.”

He goes to a drawer and pulls out a magazine article about Gordon that’s kept inside a plastic sleeve. “It won’t be very quiet up there today,” he says, with what seems like a touch of glee in his voice. “They’re doing trail maintenance.”

As it turns out, the trail is quiet, very quiet: amazingly, wonderfully devoid of machine sounds. Only the river, birds, wind and raindrops are audible.

By the time we reach One Square Inch, volunteers with the Washington Trail Association are heading back. Mostly they’re carrying hand tools, but one person is packing a gas-powered chain saw.

After lunch, Hempton leads us into the thick forest following a closer but less direct route than he gives on his website, where he also lists GPS coordinates.

Within two short minutes, we’re there, in a nondescript but beautifully lush area filled with a jumble of vegetation. He points out the small rock he keeps atop a large felled tree limb, as well as the note-filled jar on the forest’s carpeted floor. Just as we arrive, a beam of sun appears for the first time that afternoon. We agree to fan out and walk back separately, so we can enjoy a conversation-free return.

I write a few words for the jar, thanking Hempton for bringing me here, thanking nature for existing. I read other notes too. Some are a few words, others are longer; some are poems. Hempton requests they not be quoted out of respect for the authors. Some note-writers, he says, have intimated they scattered loved ones’ ashes there. Truth be told, though I tried to feel the energy of the Inch, I was eager to return to the path where the sun could reach me—and where it was just as quiet.

Perhaps 50 or so people have visited the site since Hempton created it on Earth Day, April 22, 2005. What would happen if it really caught on? It’s easy to be alone there in early April, but what about in the summer, when most of the park’s quarter-million visitors arrive?

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