photo courtesy of James Allan, Wikimedia Creative Commons
A quiet morning, the cedars and Douglas firs at the end of the street are lost in the mist, and the long, plaintive sigh of a foghorn floats over the water and up the hill.
Nighttime, the house is quiet at last, the bed turned down, and in the distance, a train whistles, questioning and then fading.
I live about seven blocks up from the waterfront and the railroad tracks, so the foghorns and train whistles aren’t too loud. By the time they reach my house, they’re soft and muted. Romantic.
In the summer when I open my windows, I can hear highway noises too. They aren’t loud enough to be annoying, but neither are they romantic.
So what makes train whistles more romantic than the hum of a highway? Is it the sound itself, that sustained, disappearing whooo whoooooo? Perhaps it’s a feeling we inherited from our great-grandparents, from a time when the newly built transcontinental railroad opened up thousands of miles of land they dream of exploring one day.
Highway sounds are part of our everyday lives. Our cars and trucks carry us to work and to the dentist. We know exactly where they’ll take us because we do the driving. No romance there. (Although those men who sing about their pickup trucks might disagree.)
photo courtesy of L. Shyamal, Wikimedia Creative Commons
Nature gives us some of our most romantic sounds. Imagine a soft summer evening, out on the grass, under the trees. The day’s light starts to fade and the electrifying drone of cicadas begins. Crickets and amorous frogs chirp in the distance.
Bird songs are another kind of romantic. After the short daylight hours of winter, the rain and snow and the hours spent indoors, the warbling and twittering of birds in the springtime is a joyous kind of romantic sound.
Crows with their obnoxious cawing are an obvious exception. (Be careful not to insult a crow in person, though. They’re smart, and they remember your face. Just ask the University of Washington professor who got on the wrong side of a crow he was studying.)
The bark of a dog, the meow of a cat? Nope. Not romantic. But the distant howl of a wolf or coyote might qualify.
I’m beginning to think that a sound is more romantic when the source is either distant or hidden from view. There’s a sense of longing or remembering in romance, not of holding it in your hand. But then, what is romance? It’s all subjective, isn’t it? And you may not agree with me at all.
Do you have the same feeling about foghorns, train whistles and cicadas? What other sounds do you find romantic?
I do agree with you Nicki, about the trains. As a kid growing up in Big Lake, we lived right next to the train tracks, but they only came by twice a day. You got so use to them, that they were just a part of your life. Living in Auburn now, on the west hill, we hear the trains down in the valley every night from our bedroom window. It is romantic and it reminds me of home and being a kid again…
Remembering your childhood, Julie, must add an extra pleasure to the sound.
For me only distant sounds qualify for something to be called “romantic”. Sure, bird song is nice but in early morning hours with the window open it can get rather annoying. However I feel like this only when I am at home. When I am in our cottage next to a lake with forest all around I feel much more relaxed and love those sounds of animals during day and night.
I agree that bird song is not always romantic. For me, it’s almost always cheerful, especially in the spring after a long absence. When we lived in the South Pacific, the birds were very noisy in the morning, but it was a cheerful way to wake up. At sunset, when they fought over for a roosting place, it was less pleasant. I guess that wasn’t bird song; it was bird argument.
I love the sound of traffic rumbling over the drawbridge to the island. And at my dad’s boyhood home in Vermont, the trucks driving up Route 5 lulled me to sleep at night as they announced their approach and then faded away.
And trains, crickets, and foghorns definitely are magical sounds when they aren’t too intrusive and close.
Sounds are such a great part of our lives, annoying or romantic. The train, you are right, brings some nostalgia maybe for past travels and trigger also a desire to leave for the unknown. I live near the wildlife so I go to sleep with the sound of coyotes howling in conservation land below my home. I also wake up with the sound of birds chirping all around the house. In between I will hear the crickets, the owls and other nocturnal creatures. I favor the sounds of nature to the roaring of cars and trucks. But when I am in Paris, where I lived before, I found them appropriate to the setting.
The hoot of an owl. That’s another good sound. I do like the sound of coyotes howling … but then … oh, dear! … I remember what happened to my daughter’s cat. So sad.
I love the summer sounds of cicadas and crickets in the evening and birds in the morning. When I was a child, we lived near a cement plant with the gentle murmur of activity. It wasn’t loud, just a soft background noise. When I moved as a young adult, I couldn’t go to sleep in dead quiet. For me that background sound meant home. Even today, I don’t really like silence.
I like to play music around the house. When I’m driving, I listen to music or to NPR. When I turn everything off, I’m surprised at the sounds my car makes.
I love the sound of the people chanting sutra together in a puja-bhakti (praying rite).
I also like the sound of insects at night. We can still hear it in some parts of the town.
“…people chanting sutra…” That’s lovely.
I love the sound of far-off highways as the cars grind across the pavement.
Distant sounds leave so much to the imagination.