Whenever my mom visits from San Francisco, she comments on how quiet it is in the suburbs where I live. In the wee hours of the morning, when the bats go home and the birds begin to sing, I can still hear the occasional car on the freeway, about a half mile away. Come morning, there isn’t a single day when I don’t hear construction (six houses are going up near me) or a leaf blower or power mower.

If I was wealthy and powerful, I’d find a way to create a couple days a year when no power tools were used. If you want to mow, use a push mower. A broom works instead of a leaf blower. I think our world is polluted with sound and our minds never get to rest in quiet.

My friend Sharon has a farm up in Duvall, east of Seattle. Up there, you don’t hear crows — too far from the city. On nights I’ve slept there, the sound of a plane overhead seems out of place.

I don’t want an absence of sound — there’s a place where you can achieve that, and apparently, it will drive you mad. But I would like to hear the world without machines once in a while. There’s a place here in Washington State that would do — in the Olympic National Park. I wish it was bigger than a square inch, though, and I wish we all had access to something like that a couple times a year. Or a month.

What do you do for quiet? Or do you avoid it at all costs?