January 8th, 2010
The hush of fallen snow has once again returned to the glacier-capped peaks of Olympic National Park and down in the Hoh Valley, the rain beats new rhythms through its 300-foot tall forest. This is a sonic wonderland, rich with opportunities to truly be alone and empty of workaday thoughts, a rare, pristine haven for restoring your senses. Meanwhile snowmobiles continue to roar through Yellowstone. The chop of helicopters shatter the natural silence at Hawaii Volcanoes and Haleakala. And again this year, an unbelievable 90,000 air tours will fly over Grand Canyon. Without a sound level meter or even a microphone to measure noise intrusions, Olympic Park management has turned a deaf ear to the urgent need of protecting its endangered natural soundscape. Olympic National Park is the last great quiet place among the 392 units managed by the National Park Service; yet the operating budget to save the silence and the natural sonic wonders of this park remains zero dollars—yes, zero. What’s more, Karen Gustin, Superintendent of Olympic National Park, replied in a 2009 email: “Olympic NP is in queue to start an air tour management plan sometime within the next couple of years or so.”
Planning for air tours? We should be banning not planning.
Speak out for silence (email your concerns to Supt. Gustin Karen_Gustin@nps.gov)and give generously to One Square Inch of Silence. Please help save this national treasure for present and future generations. Your support is the voice of silence. Donate.
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October 12th, 2009
The quietest place in the United States is now active with the calls of the Roosevelt Elk and the soft applause of falling maple leaves. This is a perfect time to visit and experience, first hand, the profound depths of nature in the absence of noise pollution.
Quiet eco-tourism is now building a ground swell of interest with One Square Inch of Silence listed as among the world’s most desirable destinations for aural solitude by Forbes Traveler, MSN and Yahoo!
Air travel is the number one destroyer of natural quiet in wilderness areas. As the Holiday Season approaches and air travel peaks, don’t forget to mention to your airline that according to information provided by the Air Transport Association it costs less than a dollar per passenger to avoid flying over a national park’s wilderness area—far less of a cost than weather! Ask your pilot to file a “deviation from flight plan” to avoid national parks and help save silence. This action will help bring this urgent need to the attention of airlines by those people they value most.
Ken Burns, producer of The National Parks—America’s Best Idea, reviews the book, One Square Inch of Silence. “After a while we begin to sense that it is silence that is our greatest teacher. The interval between musical notes. The pauses in a play or speech or conversation. The awe-inspiring cloisters of our civilizations. But it is in nature, as this wonderful gem of a book reveals, that we find the real blessing of silence.”
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June 30th, 2009
Summer is a wonderful season to visit One Square Inch of Silence in the Hoh Rain Forest. This is the driest time of year and the trail is easily travelled. There are plenty of places along the nearly level 3.2 mile hike to OSI for you sit and listen peacefully to the presence of everything—including the distant echoes of Roosevelt Elk and the tall winds that roll up the valley almost 300’ overhead. On the links page you will find information about current weather, nearby accommodations, and camping opportunities. Don’t forget to stop in the ranger station and let them know that you treasure this place and you want the acoustic environment of the park saved. (The current park budget for both natural quiet and natural soundscape management is zero.) Your voice for silence DOES count because visitor feedback helps determine management priorities.
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April 13th, 2009
One Square Inch of Silence recognizes that Wednesday, April 29th is International Noise Awareness Day. OSI will be at New York’s Central Park on Sunday, April 26th, 2009, noon to 4:00 pm to combine noise awareness with quiet places protection for Earth Day events led by the Central Park Conservancy. Authors of the new book, One Square Inch of Silence (Free Press, 2009), Gordon Hempton and John Grossmann, will be on hand to meet visitors and discuss the need to conserve quiet places.
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January 7th, 2009
One Square Inch of Silence has continued to expand and attract wide spread public support. What began less than four years ago on Earth Day 2005 by a single person, has now touched the lives of millions, thanks to newspaper, magazine, and television coverage. Media outlets as far away as Italy, Germany, and France have spread the news of One Square Inch and its pioneering role in preserving endangered natural silence.
It is my hope that Olympic National Park will indeed be recognized as the “Listener’s Yosemite”, a place of profound aural solitude. In 2008, Olympic Park received a new park superintendent, Karen Gustin, and a new General Management Plan that will guide the park’s development for more than a decade. However, its soundscape and the park’s extraordinary natural quiet are scarcely recognized and no natural quiet or soundscape management plans exist. There’s not even a sound level meter on hand; not one dollar in its budget slated to protect this valuable natural resource. It will be up to public outcry to protect this last great quiet place.
One Square Inch of Silence now has a Board of Directors and is in the process of filing for 501-C3 non-profit, tax-exempt status. It is the subject of an upcoming book, also called One Square Inch of Silence, due out in March 2009 from Free Press, a division of Simon & Schuster. In it, you can visit One Square Inch through text, images, and audio CD and also experience the extraordinary wonder that is the Hoh Rain Forest. You’ll then travel with me across America on an historic sound safari, as I listen to the land and Americans I meet, in search of vanishing silence and the impact of ever spreading man-made noise. Finally, my co-author John Grossmann and I meet with government officials in Washington, D.C. to press for a One Square Inch of Silence-spearheaded campaign to preserve natural quiet. In 2009, we hope that Washington Senator Maria Cantwell will introduce legislation into the 111th session of Congress to designate a 20-mile radius no flight zone over One Square Inch, helping to federally sanction the world’s first quiet sanctuary.
Meanwhile, the FAA seems to be routing more and more flights directly over Olympic National Park. On December 10, 2008, jet noise broke the natural quiet and then continued for more than 30 minutes—a disappointing “record” in my years of monitoring and also a reminder that unless action is taken soon we will lose this treasure forever.
Please speak out for silence by supporting the One Square Inch Foundation.
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July 2nd, 2008
OSI has received an outpouring of public support due to the recent attention by ABC’s Nightline and Ode Magazine. We look forward to making continued progress at saving the quietest place in the lower 48. For those of you who are planning to walk the quiet path to OSI, you can find directions on the links page, or send us an email for answers to your specific questions.
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February 26th, 2008
OSI is now accessible with the re-opening of the Hoh River Road. This comes just in time with the first annual OSI board meeting on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday of this week at Kalaloch Lodge inside Olympic National Park. We look forward to announcing the results of this meeting on our next news posting.
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February 1st, 2008
Olympic National Park has announced that the Hoh Road is closed outside the park boundary because of flood damage. There is currently two feet of snow at the Hoh Rain Forest Visitor Center. Weather and snow conditions permitting, the road is expected to open by the end of February.
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September 18th, 2007
The three month, 10,000 mile trip across the United States to Washington, D.C., was completed with the safe return of the OSI stone to the moss covered log 3.2 miles up the Hoh River Trail.
You can view photographs of Silent Journey: One Square Inch to Washington, D.C., in either pdf format (5MB) or PowerPoint (12MB). Text descriptions and place names have been omitted to keep the experience quiet, but just for now. Silence will have a voice in an upcoming book where readers can listen to the American landscape and read what fellow Americans have to say about the need to preserve natural quiet. All expenses were paid by the publisher, Simon & Schuster.
During this journey more than 6,000 comments were received by the OSI website. These comments are in the process of review. Thank you for your support!
Your donations are still needed to save the natural quiet of Olympic Park. Please give generously. Your contribution does make a difference.
Click here for hiking directions to OSI.
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March 30th, 2007
The original OSI stone (pictured on this website) is currently making a 106 day tour across America to Washington, D.C. Stops will include Washington State, Idaho, Montana, Utah, Colorado, Nebraska, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and Maryland before reaching our Nation’s Capital. The stone will be returned to Olympic Park in September; meanwhile, another stone temporarily rests on the moss covered log deep within the Hoh Rain Forest protecting silence over 1,000 square miles. Public access to the Hoh Rain Forest is not yet available but expected sometime in early May.
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