It’s that time of year again! Leaf blower time! Yuck.

I love the fall. It’s full of color and change. And usually I love my neighborhood. It’s located behind a big hill, so we don’t hear much of the street traffic from the major thoroughfare in our area. And, of course, it’s on the lake, so the vista and the quiet — even when it’s raining, like it is today — are beautiful. But there are certain times when the noise level is literally deafening, namely when people should be raking.

It’s important for those of us who live on the lakes in Madison to deal with the leaves that fall in our yards. Every leaf that goes into the lake produces fodder for the next season’s algae growth — one pound of phosphorus from any source, including leaves, results in 500 pounds of algae. In fact, this time of year you can see yard signs all over town, stating “Love your lakes — Don’t leaf them.” So I guess I should be glad that people are blowing their leaves away from the water. But it would probably be better for them as well as for me and their other neighbors, if they raked rather than using leaf blowers. They’d get some exercise, and I wouldn’t have to walk around with my fingers in my ears.

As a singer, sound and its lack — stillness — are very important to me. I come from a noisy family. My father was half-deaf, so we learned to speak loudly in order to be heard. All six of us – my father, mother, three sisters and I – sang quartets in the car while traveling, with the youngest kids doubling up on the melody. And at supper the child who jumped in fastest with the most volume often took over the conversation. So it took years for me to learn that “the secret power of my song lies in its silence.”

I incorporated this wisdom into my music well before I understood its full implications. In the last two decades, I have learned that stillness – whether it’s the quiet needed for inhaling or the rests between the notes – not only energizes my music, but in a larger sense, also opens up a space for greater peace and understanding. If I still my voice and then my thoughts, I can listen to my inner wisdom. But in a world where I am bombarded with visual and auditory stimuli — like leaf blowers — that’s difficult to do.

I guess I’m not the only one worried about this issue. In fact, I had a conversation with my oldest friend about loud muzak in stores just yesterday. Areas where quiet prevails are among the most endangered in our world today. Gary Hempton recently wrote One Square Inch of Silence: One Man’s Search for Natural Silence in a Noisy World concerning this topic. Hempton is an acoustic ecologist and has created award-winning recordings of natural sounds. As a result, the extinction of natural soundcapes — places where stillness thrives — troubles him greatly. In a recent review of his book, Hempton notes

Noise is quickly becoming a modern plague found nearly everywhere and often at unsafe levels. Noise has become so prevalent that it’s taken for granted.

Even though we seem to undervalue quiet, it’s important to realize that it allows us to converse, to sleep, to learn, to reflect, and it’s even conducive to healing. But currently we seem to have little awareness of what we’re losing. On my daily walk, I long for silence, the prerequisite for the meditative rest that can result. But I guess I shouldn’t complain about an occasional leaf blower — especially if it’s one of my elderly neighbors — if I compare my annoyance to living near a busy airport. When Hempton visited Washington, D.C to lobby for the preservation of quiet, he met a woman who lived near Reagon International Airport. She reported that after 9/11 during the three weeks when flights were prohibited, she heard the sounds of her neighbors in their homes for the first time. Of course, that ended and the noise resumed.

Maybe our world would be a little less anxious without all the noise. I know I would be.