Earlier in November of the same year, I penned an article entitled “Seeking solace from the silence,” which described my coping mechanism for dealing with the quietude that existed at the farm in the days following the Thanksgiving celebration.

I had gone to the woods to seek solace from the silence of an empty house and had been consoled by the silence of the familiar woods that I hunt. I’m always struck by the dichotomy that is the silence of the woods, a silence wherein so much happens.

That silence is always a balm for my soul. I am comforted by the footfalls of deer and the bounding leaps of the squirrels in the dry leaves, by the calls of the pileated woodpecker and the song of the red-eyed vireo.

It is clear to me that we need both sound and silence. We need to be connected to family and friends and we need to be untethered from those connections. We need the noise of conversation, of home, of work, and we need the silence of quiet places.

My love for the outdoors is the most obvious expression of this reality for me. Hunting, hiking, camping, and fishing provide me with both connections (when experienced with family and friends) and moments of silence (when experienced alone).

In the words of writer John Gierach, “The purpose of fishing isn’t to catch fish, it’s to go places where fish are caught.” I concur, and I suspect that many of you do as well, as it is in these places where we find the hush necessary to quiet our minds.

Nature and the natural world are therapeutic. Terms like ecotherapy and forest bathing have become commonplace these days as descriptors of the treatments and techniques used to improve both our physical and mental health and well-being. We all need our “quiet place.”

I was reminded of this fact while reading the new issue of “Garden & Gun” this week. In her article entitled “A Quiet Place: Seeking Out Moments of Sweet Silence in a North Carolina Forest,” author Latria Graham speaks to the importance of removing ourselves from the noise that bombards us in our daily lives.

Graham, who spent the last ten years traveling and teaching across the country, had recently accepted a new position as an assistant professor of English, and she says that her “ears were unprepared for the transition from wandering the woods and writing in isolation to the chaos of college.”

The constant sounds of doors opening and closing, throats being cleared, air conditioners blowing, and students walking, talking, squeaking, and yelling had Graham a bit off-kilter. “Every day I sat in my office struggling to focus, sonically overwhelmed by the man-made cacophony.”

Graham needed to find a quiet place, and in an effort to do that she reached out to Gordon Hempton, an acoustic ecologist and co-founder of Quiet Parks International.

Full disclosure, I didn’t know acoustic ecologists existed and I can say the same for Quiet Parks International. However, after reading more about the organization, I must say that I am intrigued by their work.

According to the Quiet Parks website (quietparks.org), the non-profit is “committed to saving quiet for the benefit of all life.” Their vision is to preserve “a world where everyone has daily access to quiet and opportunities to listen to the sounds of nature.”

Even more interesting were statistics showing just how hard listening to nature’s symphony is for many people as, according to Quiet Places International, “quiet places are quickly becoming extinct.” Citing data from Bureau of Transportation statistics, the group points out that “97% of the U.S. population is exposed to noise from aviation and highways.”

I have no doubt this is true, as even in my quiet places in the woods I can still hear the sounds of vehicles and airplanes. However, I have trained myself to listen, to tune out the distractions and focus on the natural world around me. According to Graham, she had to learn to do the same.

With Hempton’s help, Graham was able to train her ears to reach what he refers to as our “auditory horizon,” which, he says, “measures our area of awareness.” Hempton explains that, “In a place like the Kalahari Desert the auditory horizon is more than twenty miles.”

However, as Graham explains in her article, “in the last century or so, our world with its planes, trains, automobiles, and rockets has become as loud as it’s ever been, and that horizon has shrunk.”

What does this mean for us? I think it means that we must learn how to listen or, more accurately, how to focus our listening. We must find our “quiet place” and focus on the natural world around us.

According to Graham, “The longer I sit, the more the forest seems to breathe—here, I realize, quiet isn’t the absence of anything, but the presence of everything.”

Until next time, here’s to tuning in to the presence of everything that surrounds us, to the dichotomy that is the silence of the woods, a silence wherein so much happens, and here’s to being out there listening in our great outdoors.

Email outdoors columnist Brad Dye at braddye@comcast.net.