It takes time to adapt to new surroundings, especially when there are no familiar sounds around. Being surrounded by silence in a mighty nature is scary for someone like me. According to old Christian beliefs, silence is made in heaven, and after one month in Halsa, I tend to agree.
I was raised in a chaos of sounds from radio, TV, traffic, and other urban noises. I am used to talking often, and the people around me do the same. Familiar noises create a sense of safety, and it is easy to feel lonely and lost when you have to listen intently; the only thing you can hear is the sound of your own breath. It’s scary for me, and I always lock the door when I’m alone.
Beauty often makes the fear fade away. I experienced this one day when I was alone in the cottage and saw some deer outside. I unlocked the door and went out to get a little closer. I was not scared at all; I was only fascinated by the beauty of the grazing deer.
Some days later, the deer returned, and my husband took some photos of it. He now has a small collection of nature images from Halsa that capture the beauty of the silence I experienced there. I would love to show you some:
I still lock the door when I’m alone, but I now understand more deeply how strong my longing for silence is and that “silence is golden.”
One response to “Halsa, Norway: The Silence of Nature”
[…] For me, silence has always been a natural part of life, something I instinctively value. But for Grace, who was born and raised in a densely populated district of Davao, the phenomenon was completely unfamiliar when she arrived in Spain. Even though we first settled in a lively small town on the Costa Tropical, she found it disturbingly quiet. She was truly put to the test when, six months later, we spent three months on El Hierro, the smallest of the Canary Islands, in a house surrounded by a barren lava landscape, where only the wind and the occasional cry of a seagull deepened the silence even further. Fortunately, she embraced the opportunity and opened herself to it. Half a year later, when we lived in a small cabin overlooking a stunning Norwegian fjord, she praised the silence in an article she wrote here. […]