REGIONAL—Matt Mikkelsen was recording in the Amazon rainforest when he heard an unexpected racket that sounded like castanets, but what he was hearing wasn’t instruments. It was frogs.
“I was as surprised as you are right now,” Mikkelsen told an audience at the Grand Ely Lodge during a recent presentation for the Tuesday Group. “I was like, ‘What is that sound?’”
The moment captures the paradox at the heart of Mikkelsen’s unusual career: Places that sound loud can actually be profoundly quiet, while locations that seem peaceful often harbor a constant din of noise pollution. As a co-founder of Quiet Parks International, Mikkelsen travels the world with highly sensitive recording equipment, searching for something that’s becoming increasingly rare: 15 consecutive minutes of natural sound, uninterrupted by human-made noise.
It’s harder to find than you might think. In fact, Mikkelsen estimates there are fewer than 10 places in North America that reliably offer such intervals of acoustic purity. Globally, the number might not exceed 20.
The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness is one of them.
The sound of silence
Mikkelsen’s journey to becoming a researcher of natural quiet began with what he calls “falling down a really deep and obscure rabbit hole of trying to find and record nature all over the world.” After going to school in Central New York and living across the American West —Washington State, Wyoming, “kind of all over” — he ended up in Duluth through what he describes as “an odd set of circumstances.”
“I had only Googled Duluth once before I moved there,” he admits. “I just had no clue.”
Soon after arriving, curiosity drove him north to investigate the Boundary Waters because it kept coming up in his research for soundscapes and quiet places.
“I just immediately really fell in love with the soundscapes here,” he said. “Even after my first evening spent in the woods up here, I knew it would qualify for a wilderness quiet park. It was that apparent to me, which never happens.”
Usually, Mikkelsen explained, it takes weeks of computer research to examine flight patterns, noise pollution maps, and road traffic maps before he’s confident enough to visit a location. Then he typically spends two to three weeks exploring, trying to find quiet spots.
“I just camped on a random lake in Superior National Forest and was smacked in the face with some of the most profound and prolific quiet experiences that I’ve ever had.”
Why quiet matters
Mikkelsen shared statistics about our increasingly noisy world. Nearly 10 billion people traveled by air last year. When he first started giving presentations, that number was closer to 3.5 billion — an exponential increase that represents one of the biggest sources of noise pollution in wilderness areas.
Ocean shipping traffic has similarly exploded.
“Pull up a live flight tracking app or website,” Mikkelsen said. “It is astounding how many planes are in the sky at any given time, how many ships are in our seas and lakes and rivers.”
The health impacts extend beyond annoyance. Noise has been proven harmful in multiple ways: cardiovascular side effects, diminished mental health, increased stress hormones. Children affected by high noise levels experience negative side effects.
“We didn’t evolve to be subjected to this level of noise on a daily basis,” Mikkelsen said.
The remedy for these effects is access to quiet.
“When you’re in a quiet place, your stress hormones decrease, your heart rate lowers, you feel calm, but your body is also becoming calm,” he said
But the effects extend beyond humans.
“Noise really impacts nature, probably even more than we want to know,” Mikkelsen said. “Nature is busy communicating the same way we are, and when nature is subjected to noise, it diminishes their ability to communicate.”
When birds call or sing, they have specific goals, not just making sounds humans appreciate. Noise interferes with nature’s ability to thrive. Through studying soundscapes, Mikkelsen has found that places with healthy, intact soundscapes usually have other parts of their ecosystems intact as well.
“When I find places that are free from noise pollution, they’re often free from all sorts of other types of pollution as well. So, it’s a really good general indicator for the health of an ecosystem—what it sounds like.”
The science of listening
Mikkelsen’s methodology involves setting up high-sensitivity microphone systems in strategically plotted places, collecting data that usually requires at least three days in a week and three hours in a day. That daily collection happens before sunrise, for two reasons: Sound travels most effectively before the sun rises and before wind picks up, and “that’s the most magnificent time of day to listen to nature.”
He tries to set up testing equipment away from streams or waterfalls, any consistent natural sound that reduces what he calls “acoustic horizon,” or how far you can hear.
But there’s more to the process than hard data.
“There’s also this indescribable feeling of quiet that you can have,” Mikkelsen said. “A big part of our process is making sure that our volunteers collecting data are equipped to write down what they’re noticing, thinking, feeling.”
He believes it’s possible to “hold hard scientific data in one hand, and the feelings you’re having in another, and give them both equal weight.”
The Boundary Waters standard
The Boundary Waters “passes with flying colors in a way that almost every other place I’ve been to in the world does not,” Mikkelsen said.
To qualify as a wilderness quiet park, a location must provide a noise-free interval of 15 minutes or more.
“Fifteen minutes of just pure, natural sound is incredibly rare,” he said. “I’d say there are fewer than 10 places in North America that experience that sort of dependable noise-free interval, and I would assume not more than maybe 20 in the world.”
During his recent weekend trip to the BWCAW, Mikkelsen heard only six airplanes over the entire time and didn’t see another person for three days straight.
“We have just unprecedented access to those really special environments,” he said
A call to listen
Mikkelsen concluded his presentation with a quote: “Silence is not the absence of anything, but the presence of everything. It is the presence of time undisturbed. It can be felt within the chest. Silence nurtures our nature, our human nature, and lets us know who we are. Left with a more receptive mind and a more attuned ear, we become better listeners not only to nature, but to each other.”
As threats to wilderness areas intensify globally, Mikkelsen views the protection of places like the Boundary Waters as crucial.
“This is a great time to be talking about how much we love these places and how much we care about them and how much we want to protect them,” he said, acknowledging organizations like Save the Boundary Waters that do “this crucial work so we can have this type of experience.”
His challenge to the audience was direct: “My call to action for all of you is to start if you haven’t or continue to listen, not only to these places, but to each other, to your neighbors, to your family. I think the more we listen as people, the happier and better people we are.”