Gordon Hempton, acoustic ecologist, enlightens us on what it means to truly listen to our surroundings and to discover what it is that we hear that lets us know exactly where we are. He describes silence as not the absence of sound but rather the absence of noise from modern life. "Silence is the poetics of space; what it means to be in a place." True silence is almost impossible to find on earth with even remote natural areas affected by noise pollution. And yet the silence of the natural world connects us back to the land in a way that nurtures and enchants us.