The sound

Last night I took the dog out for a late night constitutional. We stood around, as we do, sniffing and looking at horizons.
After a minute I began to feel as though something was odd. Couldn't identify it for several minutes.

It was silent.

No wind. No rain. no bird calls. No motorway noise. No hushing of the big treetops. No lights on the motorway.
Silence and stillness. Big clouds unmoving in the dark sky with a moon somewhere above them casting a very faint radiance over the fields. Me and the dog, sniffing and looking and listening with all our might.

Nothing happened. After a while we went inside and felt all peaceful and soothed.


It's amazing how rarely it's quiet even out here.

I have to add this story which I read in New Scientist about thirty years ago. Concerning the plains of....somewhere Mid Western America and FLAT - Iowa? Nebraska? Well, wherever. The plains were so vast and flat that a constant steady wind blew across them, always from the same direction, unceasing and unvarying.

One day the wind stopped.

All the chickens fell over.