譯/莊蕙嘉
The hiker trudged up a logging road and into a valley, tracing a route that seemed unremarkable. There were no sweeping views of the mountains that towered nearby. There was no summit to scale. Yet he stopped suddenly, jubilant, after about 4 miles of walking. He had found exactly what he was searching for: quiet.
這位健行者奮力走上產業道路，進入一個山谷，循著一條看似平凡無奇的路徑前進。那兒並沒有附近高山的寬闊視野，沒有峰頂可以攀登。然而在走了約四哩後，他突然十分欣喜地停了下來。他真的找到了他在尋找的東西：安靜。
"Let's see," said the hiker, Dennis Follensbee, "how we experience three minutes of silence."
這位健行者丹尼斯．佛倫斯比說：「讓我們瞧瞧，如何體驗三分鐘的寂靜。」
In these loud times — with political foes yelling on television, trucks rumbling through streets, and smartphones chirping all around — who doesn't want a little peace and quiet? But some wilderness lovers have taken their aversion to the cacophony of the modern world a step further, traveling to some of the country's most remote areas in a quest for utter silence.
在這個喧囂的時代，政治仇敵在電視上吼叫，卡車轟隆隆穿過街道，到處都是智慧手機嘀啾作響，誰不想要一點點平和與寧靜？然而一些荒野愛好者卻把對刺耳的現代世界的嫌惡更往前推進一步，旅行到這個國家某些最偏僻的地區，尋求徹底的寂靜。
Armed with Google Maps, bushwhacking tools and 16 years of experience hiking in the area, Follensbee, a programmer from Lebanon, New Hampshire, is on an exhaustive search for the noiseless hollows and dells of New Hampshire's White Mountains.
備妥谷歌地圖、叢林開路工具以及在該地區健行16年的經驗，來自新罕布夏州雷巴嫩市的程式設計師佛倫斯比，正在新州的白山中仔細搜尋沒有噪音的凹地和山谷。
"I know there must be places I can go to have peace," said Follensbee, 39, who has mapped 23 quiet places so far, though he has shared the exact locations only with family members and close friends. (If quiet places are widely known, he reasons, "they cease to be quiet.")
39歲的佛倫斯比說：「我知道那兒一定有我可以享有平靜的地方。」目前為止他已勘察到23個安靜的地點，不過他只和家人好友分享確實的位置。（他解釋道，如果安靜的地方廣為人知，「它們就不再安靜了。」）
Connoisseurs of quiet say it is increasingly difficult, even in the wilderness, to escape the sounds of vehicles, industries, voices. A study published last year in the academic journal Science, found that noise pollution was doubling sound levels in much of the nation's conserved land, like national parks and areas preserved by the federal Bureau of Land Management.
追求寧靜的行家說，即使是在野外，要避開車輛、產業及人所產生的聲音，也愈來愈困難。去年刊載於「科學」期刊的一項研究結果發現，在國家保護區內的許多地方，噪音汙染已使聲級翻倍，像是國家公園和聯邦土地管理局的保留地。
Noise that humans create can be annoying but also dangerous to animals who rely on hearing to seek their prey and avoid predators. "We're really starting to understand the consequences of noise and the importance of natural sound," said Rachel Buxton, a conservation biologist at Colorado State University who worked on the study.
人類製造的噪音不但惱人，對於依賴聽覺尋找獵物及躲避掠食者的動物而言也很危險。負責這項研究的科羅拉多州立大學保育生物學家芮秋．巴克斯頓說：「我們確實開始了解噪音造成的後果與自然聲音的重要性。」
In Washington state, Gordon Hempton, an acoustic ecologist — part of a small field of experts who study natural soundscapes — has made it a mission to preserve what he calls "1 square inch" of quiet in Olympic National Park. He and other advocates have raised concerns about noise from loud Navy jets and other air traffic, but says he believes that Olympic National Park is one of only about 12 places in the continental United States where a person could listen for 15 minutes and hear no man-made sound.
在華盛頓州，聽覺生態學家戈登．漢普頓已擔起一項使命，要在奧林匹克國家公園內保留他所謂的「一平方吋」的寧靜之地，他是研究自然音景的少數專家之一。他和其他倡議者已喚起對來自大聲的海軍噴射機和其他空中交通噪音的關注，但他說，相信奧林匹克國家公園是美國本土碩果僅存的12處地點之一，在這些地方一個人可在15分鐘之中不聽到任何人為聲音。
"We need to defend quiet places that remain as well as clean up places that should be quiet," Hempton said.
漢普頓說：「我們需要保護仍然寧靜的地方，同時清理那些應該安靜的地方。」
說文解字看新聞
這篇文章介紹在現代社會充斥的人為噪音中，尋求一方寧靜之所的人。文中每一段皆出現quiet或silence這兩個字，大致上都是「安靜」之意，不過細究仍有差異。
quiet是形容詞，也是名詞，可解釋為「安靜、寧靜、不出聲的」等意，指環境中「沒有聲音或極少聲音」，是相對狀態下的安靜，作名詞時意義與quietness幾無差異。
silence指「安靜、寂靜、無聲」的環境狀態，比quiet更靜悄無聲，是接近絕對安靜的狀態，形容詞為silent。例如教師維持教室秩序時會說be quiet，指「不要說話、安靜」；silence則強調「肅靜，不可出聲」，語氣較嚴肅。
這兩個字也可以形容人，用法不同。quiet形容「文靜、不太說話」，silent則是「緘默的、寡言的」。
silence亦常用於表現寂靜或沉默的境界與心理狀態，例如經典西洋老歌「The Sound of Silence」和改編成電影的日本作家遠藤周作小說「沉默」。
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