That's My Story

ROARING SILENCE

Originally published in Western Outdoor News the week of May 15, 2007

Photo: Needs no explanation! Sunset on the Sea of Cortez…

It’s amazing what you don’t hear if you just listen.

Many years ago when I was younger and dumber than I am now, which isn’t saying much, I decided to go sky diving. I didn’t tell my parents who will probably be reading this now and be shocked. I just went. Don’t ask permission. Ask forgiveness. I actually got hurt doing it, but that’s another story.

What amazed me, however, was something I had never heard before. As that chute opened and my heart and brain neurons stopped hammering each other in fear, I drifted downward through a cloudy haze. And I heard it. Listen. Absolutely nothing. The sound of “nothing” was so profound you couldn’t miss it. ,

You think you hear nothing? Stick your fingers in your ears and you still hear things around you or your own body. Step outside your home at night or someplace you think you’re alone and you’ll hear the hum of electrical currents, the air conditioner, traffic, the rustle of trees or bushes. Perhpas a distant plane. There is always something

“Nothing” sounds like a blank piece of paper looks.

. Climb to the top of a mountain and you’ll probably still hear something. Lock yourself in a closet or dive to the bottom of your pool and you’ll still hear something.

There are few places on the planet where you can still go to hear nothing. It was like that skydiving. Utter silence. Not a bird. Not a car. Not even the wind because I was drifting the same speed as the wind.

But, Baja might still be one of them.

I used to live in an old adobe house with a palapa (palm) roof. Ten miles down a dirt road and 100 yards up from the beach, I was in a bit of an arroyo so I didn’t get much of a breeze. I was far up enough from the beach that the calm bay in front of me rarely had waves that made a sound. Electrical hums? I didn’t have electricity. I lived by candles, torches and flashlights! Does an occasional coyote call count?

With no electricity, I obviously had no TV and I was too remote to catch radio, but what grand evenings of entertainment I would have after work. I’d pull up an old lawnchair and prop my feet up on my low stone wall. My dog would join me. And we’d sit. For hours.

And we’d let the Earth talk in silence. Shooting stars by the dozens would criss-cross the sky and you could actually see the Milky Way and indeed, there were more stars in the sky than grains of sand on the beach!

Electrical storms out to sea play a silent staccato of flashes on the horizon as lightning strobes the distant night like an artillery barrage from an old war movie.
You never saw lightning per se…only the nano-second light bulb explosions reflecting off the nighttime marine lair. Two… then three… then six… and then one… followed by three more and with no rhyme, reason, rhythm or pattern to be discerned. But one minute was never like the next and it continued for hours.

Occasionally, a ship would pass in the inky night. I never saw the boat, but you make a guess and judge the lights of the cabin and rigging. Too far to hear an engine. Too dark to make a shape. A cruiser? A sailboat? Where were they going and who was aboard? Yachties on holiday or fishermen on their way?

And down the beach, campfires flicker from the commercial fisherman’s shanty camp. An occasional headlight blinks and illuminates figures but again, too far to hear the stories you know are being told about great catches and ones that got away. Now and again and an aroma wafts by with the smell the cookfires, simmering tortillas, rice, beans and fish.

A few boats push off the beach lantern lit and bobbing in the beach surf. Out past the windline. Perhaps a bit of nightfishing or jigging for squid. I can’t see the pangas and the ocean might as well be a big black pit, but the illumination of the onboard lanterns tells me there’s activity on the water.

But as the night goes on, the campfires burn less brightly and glow only to finally wink and die. And more stars shoot by overhead Jimmy the dog has already stretched out asleep and I too turn in. No words. None needed. Just another Baja night of purely silent entertainment. I blow out the lanterns. And I can still smell the tortillas from down the beach carried by the onshore wind. Morning comes soon enough.

That’s my story. If you ever want to reach me, my e-mail is riplipboy@aol.com.