The Sound of Silence

We walked yesterday to the far end of Loch Lunndaidh, to the site of the clachan which was cleared some time in the early 1800s - picture shows the remains of the large, circular sheep fank which has two buildings inserted into it - but we lingered there for some time not so much to look at the archaeology as to....

....listen, for places such as this illustrate best the idea that the sounds of every moment of our life has layers.

In these places, far from humans and human activity, the usual loud, blanketing layers of our everyday noise have been stripped away leaving, if one stops to listen, much quieter ones. Here, a constant layer was the distant hum of traffic along the A9, occasionally pushed back by a nearer layer, such as....

....the calls of two crows harassing a red kite. Behind them were even deeper and quieter layers, difficult to hear, such as the wind whispering in the heather, so many that the sound of silence could not, and perhaps can never be heard - except in outer space.