Friends and relations have been sharing their favorite sounds recently. Usually they pause a moment to think what those sounds might be. Becka didn’t, though. “Lately,” she says, “one of my favorite sounds is my granddaughter’s little giggle.” Happy grandfather John agrees. Said granddaughter is closing in on her first birthday, and I’ve seen the videos of her laughing. No question about it: that’s one wonderful sound.
Sports noises are popular, too. Three of us love the thwock of a tennis ball hitting the sweet spot of a racket. It makes us happy to hear it when other people are hitting the ball, and when we hit the ball and hear that sound, we all admit, it’s highly gratifying.
John mentions the sound of the bat hitting the baseball just right. “You can tell it’s a home run without even looking.” “Is that an aluminum bat or a wooden bat?” “Wooden. It has to be wooden. That ping off an aluminum bat just doesn’t do it.”
Edward, Becka, and I love the sound of halyards clinking against masts.
Don says he likes the sound of a rifle. “Not the pow,” he clarifies, “the peeeew. And if you’re out West and shooting far enough, you can hear the sound of it hitting the target, too. Here in Michigan, there are so many trees, you’re never shooting that far. You need about two hundred yards to hear it.” Western man John, who has guided many, many hunters into the mountains, adds, “You can tell by the sound if they got their elk.” And, while we’re on the subject, both men rank the sound of elk bugling near the top of sounds they enjoy.
Bird sounds receive frequent mention. I particularly like the sound of big water birds, like great blue herons, that squawk when they fly over our house at night. It’s one of the pleasures of living close to ponds. We like screech owls in the night. They don’t sound screechy to us, but quite musical. Also, of course, we like the sounds of Baltimore orioles and wrens and cardinals. Cardinals have so many different things to say, and such beautiful clear voices to say them with.
The other-worldly cry of loons on a lake is magic for most of us. Before the birds were endangered, my sisters and I used to follow them around the lake in our canoe. We loved seeing them dive below the surface and pop up again somewhere else. But the birds that do it for Don are wood ducks. “I didn’t grow up on a lake. I grew up on the Pine River. We always had wood ducks,” which, by the by, whistle instead of quacking. “I have six wood duck boxes on my property now, and the ducks in one of them have nine ducklings.
John’s avian singer of choice is the meadowlark. “There’s just something about a meadowlark,” he opines, gazing off into the distance. Of course, he temporizes this remark by citing also “the lovely voice of my lovely wife saying, ‘Turn left. Left. Turn left.’”
I love the sound of being inside the chord, whether it’s in choral music or in a band or an orchestra. When you and everyone around you gets the notes exactly right, it’s magic. It’s thrilling. The air around you vibrates differently. Our high school choir teacher, Ruth Datz, used to call it “juicy.”
Tanya likes the chords of wind chimes. “I know a lot of people don’t like them, but I do.” The wind chimes do, however, have to be nicely tuned. Another of Tanya’s favorites is “the sound of someone else taking a shower while I’m still in bed. It’s the sound of someone else who’s up already, when I don’t have to be. It’s the same thing with someone else mowing their lawn when I’m not—I’m glad it’s not me.” (This from the person who frequently cuts our grass for us out of generosity of spirit.)
Edward likes the sst-sst-sst-sst-sst of the kind of sprinkler that shoots out jets of water in a circular pattern. That’s the kind most folks had when he was a kid. It sounds like childhood summer.
Don—swim coach and competitive swimmer—loves the sound of people swimming. “Just a few,” he says, “not a lot. I also love a brook or a stream. You know,” he says, “water.”
And, in fact, water was the most frequently mentioned favorite sound. “Water lapping against something,” says transplanted Michigander Tanya, “like a boat hull.” Or a dock. Or the shore of a great lake. That sound is Pure Michigan.
15 July 2022