There are so few places left in the world that are truly quiet. Try to remember the last time you were in a place where you couldn’t hear man made noise. How long did that quiet last? A minute? 10? An hour? Even on camping trips in the backcountry I regularly hear planes fly over every day. There is almost nowhere on Earth that is truly “remote” anymore, where we can experience what the world sounded like before engines.

Thacker Pass is one of those places where it is still quiet. Where you can listen the sounds of the wind in the sagebrush, the birds, the turning of a jackrabbit’s ear to listen back to you, and not hear man made sound for minutes or even hours on end. We lose these quiet places at our peril, for without them, we forget who we truly are.

The wind in the sagebrush

by Wind at Thacker Pass