側耳傾聽

You’ve heard the expression “take time to smell the roses，” right？ Well， before you flex those olfactory muscles of yours， have you ever considered taking the time to just listen instead？ There is a whole world of sound that goes unnoticed to us in the daily rat race of city life. Hell， I even started wearing earphones and listening to sports podcasts during my daily commute just to tune out all the ambient commotion that fills the air on a given day. And I have no scientific basis for this， but I’m pretty sure that the intense heat here in Guangzhou only amplifies the decibel level of the local crane population （the loud construction ones， not the quiet feathered ones）.

But what I didn’t know is that as cities keep getting louder， the countryside keeps getting quieter. What does that mean？ Well， today’s features cover this very topic； natural sound. First， in One Square Inch of Silence， Gordon Hempton explains how his life changed forever after pulling off to the side of the road and truly listening to the “magnificent， deep， primordial， soul-shaking sounds” of crashing thunder. Next， in The Dawn Chorus—Nature’s Best Symphony， Meg Lowman goes down the list of America’s underappreciated vocal stylists from the ornithological kingdom. And in John Vidal’s article， A Great Silence Spreads over the Natural World， we hear how Bernie Krause was able to capture some the world’s most secret sounds and bring them to the silver screen.

So the next time you find yourself on a busy city bus， on a deserted beach， or in a cornfield during a thunderstorm， just close your eyes， open your ears， and take it all in， because you never know if you’ll hear those same sounds again.

你應該聽過這樣的說法——“抽空去聞聞玫瑰的芬芳，”對吧？嗯，在你收縮嗅覺肌肉前，是否曾想過花時間去聆聽一下？在緊張的城市日常生活中，我們忽略了許多聲音。該死，某天，我甚至開始在通勤時段戴上耳機聽體育播客，只為蓋過充斥在周圍空氣中的喧鬧聲。我相當確定廣州那灼人的熱氣擴大了當地起重機的聲音分貝，雖然這并沒有科學根據（這里的“crane”指的是嘈雜的、用于施工建筑的起重機，而不是安靜的、有羽毛的鶴）。

但我不知道，在城市變得越來越吵鬧的同時，鄉村卻變得越來越寂靜。這是什么意思？嗯，這就是本期的主題——自然之聲。首先，在《一平方英寸的寂靜》中，戈登·漢普頓詳述了在他停車走到路邊的小徑，用心聆聽那“宏偉、深沉、原始、撼動靈魂”的隆隆雷聲后，他的人生發生了徹底的改變。接著，在《鳥兒的黎明大合唱——大自然最美的交響樂》中，瑪格·洛曼給我們展現了美國一群未獲充分賞識的鳥類歌唱家。而在由約翰·維達爾撰寫的《無聲的自然界》中，我們聽聞了伯尼·克勞斯是如何捕獲世界上那些最隱秘的聲音并把這些聲音呈現到大銀幕上的。

所以如果下次你發現自己身處城市喧鬧的巴士里，或是無人的海難上，抑或是暴風雨期間的玉米田中，張開你的耳朵，仔細聆聽，因為你不知道還能否再次聽到那些聲音。