One of the things that I find most different about the farm from the city house is the noise at night. I am sure if I had thought about it, I would have expected it. Maybe.In the city I had to have the windows shut and white noise going to be able to sleep. Even that caused me anxiety, could I hear if something outside was happening that I needed to call 911 for? Or could I hear if there was a break in downstairs? But if I didn't have white noise then I could hear the constant cars and street traffic, the noises of people living very lively lives at night, animals (wild and domestic), crickets, birds, dogs barking, sirens, the train, and the buzz of street lights. Fireworks, nearly year round. In the summer add what we call Mexican Polka that plays for about 72 hours straight 3 days of each week. The neighbors' television programs, volume turned up so loud, probably to drown out the outside noises. Window fans. Car stereo systems that heavily favour music with loud bass. The screeching whistle of bad breaks and boom pop rumble of failing mufflers. Good grief. Gun shots, more often than is comfortable to hear gunshots and screaming and not always followed by sirens, which is a creepy lay awake kind of moment. Yay insomnia.
The countryside is just as noisy. Different noises, but just as noisy.
Crickets, cicada, bull frogs, tree frogs, click beetles, owls, oppossums, fox barks, dog barks, raccoons, cats, and the worst....coyotes. Especially when they are near and there are lots of them running.
I can still hear the trains.
Cars still drive by, though it is a LOT less often. There are often, seasonally gunshots, though not at night. The week of 4th of July there are fireworks, but not after midnight.
Mooing. There is a lot of mooing. Especially if the bull is in the pasture. (Blushes at the thought of when I first realized why there was so much mooing......)
Did I mention bull frogs? Creaking of a not shut tight chicken house door creak banging as it swings in a dark and storm heavy breeze, a branch whapping the side of the house in the wind, breaking branches dislodging as a night critter jumps on one in a tree run and knocks a heavy one loose to break those below it as it falls.
The wind and storms are louder here. I'm not sure why.
I guess maybe I had hoped for more silence at night. The constant ringing of my ears has stopped. I thought it was a forever thing, but it stopped a week after we moved here. There are moments of complete silence though if you can catch them.....
After a heavy snow, when the night sky is clear and swept and splattered with stars, the prairies covered in a deep blanket of white. Everything, even nature, for a moment, holds its breath. Silence, like a prayer, embraces everything. Just a moment though and like magic broken, a dog barks or a sheep baas, or a car turns around the bend and makes its way down the gravel road crunching snow under rolling tires.
It is in these moments of silence that I am closest to God in prayer. More so than I ever have been in any chapel or service. Completely in awe at the utter vastness of creation and the powerful beauty of the universe.
"Amen," I break the silence with my own breathe of thankfulness and head back inside to wrangle baby giggles and read bedtime stories. These caught and released moments have begun to teach me to find the same peace in the noise too. The crickets and bull frogs become a choir for my prayers, a reminder that the music of God is not always played on organs or sung by children. The breathing rhythms of my own sleeping babies become the chords of my own music of praise, a daily meditation of thankfulness.
