Winter stillness in the Rockies amplifies the smallest sounds of travel

Evidence

The sky was absolutely cloudless, and as I made the long ascent of the Arkansas Divide, the mountains, gashed by deep canyons, came sweeping down to the valley on my right, and on my left the Foot Hills were crowned with colored fantastic rocks like castles. Everything was buried under a glittering shroud of snow. The babble of the streams was bound by fetters of ice. No branches creaked in the still air. No birds sang. No one passed or met me. There were no cabins near or far. The only sound was the crunch of the snow under Birdie’s feet. — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 169

Categorization

• STORYSTEM: The device of a vast snowbound silence broken only by one hoofbeat is a ready-made opening image for a chapter about solitude in the high country.
• CANDY: A clean, quotable line: the only sound on the whole divide was the crunch of snow under the pony’s feet.
• XREF: connects to: Wildlife in the Rockies shows no fear of human presence. — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 74; Solitary night travel on the plains makes the smallest human sounds into salvation — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 215; Distant wind can be heard across intervening stillness without being felt — Schafer, Murray R, The Soundscape- Our Sonic Environment…, 79 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Snow cover suppresses low-frequency reverberation by absorbing sound and smoothing terrain. #expands (0.95) — Donald G. Albert, Michelle E. Swearingen, Frank E. Perron, and David L. Carbee, Low Frequency Acoustic Pulse…, 100
• Solitary night travel on the plains makes the smallest human sounds into salvation #complicates (0.85) — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 215
• Distant wind can be heard across intervening stillness without being felt #complicates (0.85) — Schafer, Murray R, The Soundscape- Our Sonic Environment…, 79
• Snow is the most sound-absorbent natural ground cover #complicates (0.75) — Donald G. Albert, Acoustic Waveform Inversion with…, 5