Commotion
When I returned home from Newfoundland, the background roar of the ocean was replaced by cars on the interstate.
At home in Utah - the first place that’s ever felt like home – our house is close enough to the highway to hear the road. The kind of sound that’s there when you’re paying attention and sometimes when you’re not. It’s my least favorite thing about my most favorite place.
The resonance of the ocean in Newfoundland struck me differently than the motors, though. Maybe because the road isn’t consistent; there’s the up-down revving of engines and the percussive rattle of tractor-trailer engine brakes.
But the ocean isn’t consistent either. The waves come in heaving breaths one moment and kitten-tongue laps another. The hiking path followed Newfoundland’s east coast so the water remained visible and audible for almost every footstep we took over sixty miles and nine days.
After living in landlocked states my entire life, a piece of my attention in Newfoundland was tuned to the shifts in the ocean. The unfamiliar sound made me pay attention, just like the unfamiliar vistas resulted in pictures I wouldn’t have taken if I’d lived there since youth.
Traffic on the interstate doesn’t hit in the same way. It throws gravel from beneath tires and swells in sound at predictable times of the day. Cars have their own flow but doesn’t follow the same principles of fluid dynamics as the ocean.
The road is more like a fly buzzing your ear that you’ve learned to ignore. The sea was a background and a companion.
But still. Standing on a trail atop a hill near the road, I covered one ear with my hand and closed my eyes and for the beat of one breath imagined being on the edge of an uninterrupted vastness.