Looking for peace and quiet? Simply head to 47°51'57.5"N, 123°52'13.3"W, otherwise known as a the quietest square inch in the United States.
Marked by a "tiny red pebble resting on a mossy nurse log," this square inch of land in Washington state's Olympic National Park is the spot in America most untouched by human-made noise, writes Erin Berger at Outside Online. From Outside:
"The quietest inch isn't a sound vacuum. It represents a place with a minimum of human-made noise. The discipline of acoustic ecology… outlines an important distinction between sound and noise. The blip of water droplets from a forest canopy? Sound. The tinny din of Taylor Swift through smartphone speakers? Noise." [Outside Online]
Berger explains that if you stand at the red pebble — placed on the log by acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton in 2005 to mark the spot — you'll still hear the "flute-like bugling from Roosevelt elk, the Morse-code chirp of the American Dipper, and assertive hooting from the endangered Northern Spotted Owl." But what makes the spot "quiet" is the total lack of human-made noise — at least, for now.
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The silence of the "inch," as it's called, is in jeopardy thanks to increasing air traffic from both Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and the nearby Naval Air Station. Hempton originally found the spot devoid of overhead noise for an hour on average back in 2005, but now jets roar overhead nearly every 20 minutes. To read more about America's quietest spot — and Hempton's quest to keep it that way — head over to Outside Online.
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