An Unquiet Nation Audio ecologist Gordon Hempton talks about America's vanishing quiet spaces, and how our lives can be helped by listening to the silence. By Julia Baird Newsweek Web Exclusive Jan 28, 2010 "There are no words that can tell the hidden spirit of the wilderness, that can reveal its mystery, its melancholy, and its charm." —Theodore Roosevelt, 1910 "The day will come when man will have to fight noise as inexorably as cholera and the plague." —Nobel Prize–winning bacteriologist Robert Koch, 1905 Silence is something you assume you will always be able to find if you need it. All you have to do is drive far enough in the right direction, trek through quiet fields or woods, or dive into the sea's belly. For true silence is not noiselessness. As audio ecologist Gordon Hempton defines it, silence is "the complete absence of all audible mechanical vibrations, leaving only the sounds of nature at her most natural. Silence is ...