Silence is a natural resource we don't often think about because it is an absence, rather than a presence. But most of the places we think of as "quiet" are actually filled with an abundance of natural sounds, from canyon wrens whistling in the Grand Canyon to orca whales calling underwater in the quiet depths of an Arctic sea. As humanity grows louder, these pockets of silence and natural sounds are becoming rarer. — These are the words of our guest Peter McBride and these ideas are the focus of his book, Seeing the Silence: The Beauty of the World’s Most Quiet Places. Peter sits down with our host Erik Weihenmayer for a wide ranging chat on how a photographer versed in visual language is figuring out how to use that to describe something we experience with our ears (sound), his adventure trekking 750 some miles across Grand Canyon National Park to highlight development challenges facing this iconic landscape, how an environmental ethic took hold on his soul what he’s doing about it, and much more.
TED TALK: Is the Grand Canyon for Sale
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71jvm2Pq0Us
WATCH: Peter’s 750-mile trek across Grand Canyon National Park.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLDc1Ib1acg
LISTEN: NPR 1A podcast with Erik & Peter
READ: Seeing the Silence book excerpt in Nature magazine.
https://www.nature.org/en-us/magazine/magazine-articles/book-excerpt-search-for-silence/