A recent issue of The New Yorker magazine featured an article about noise pollution. In it the writer David Owen* explored the inescapable fact that the world is getting louder. His piece described the impacts that exposure to loud sound is having both on natural ecosystems and human health, and asked whether noise pollution could become the next public health crisis. I read this article one Monday evening while sitting in Highland Coffees in Baton Rouge, which was a good setting in which to consider the relative merits of different sorts of sounds. Highland Coffees isn’t quiet, exactly. In fact, one of the reasons I like the place is the soundtrack of classical music always playing in the background. I’m not especially passionate about classical music, but as a stress-reliever there’s something about the anonymous burble of student voices, when laid over a foundation of Bach piano concertos, that works for me. It’s kind of like a white noise machine for middle-aged people.
Anyway, The New Yorker article cited studies showing that people who live or work in loud environments are more susceptible to problems including heart disease, high blood pressure, low birth weight, “… and all the physical, cognitive, and emotional issues that arise from being too distracted to focus on complex tasks and never getting enough sleep.” I don’t sleep well, but I can’t blame the insomnia on a noisy environment. If there’s a man-made noise at the rural farmstead where we live, I’m usually the man making it. Miles from a major road, in our corner of West Feliciana parish the loudest sounds usually come courtesy of the rooster that is the self-appointed sentry of my small flock, the barking of a dog, or the howling of the distant pack of coyotes that set him off in the first place. Having grown up in a city of four million, I never imagined that I could come to cherish the sound of silence, but after twenty-five years of coming home to a quiet place, it would be hard to adjust to living in a noisier environment again. On a recent Saturday—one of the first chilly nights of fall, we lit a bonfire and sat around it late into the night. Besides the hiss and crackle of the fire, the only sounds to hear were the drowsy chirping of a few crickets that hadn’t yet shut up shop for the winter, and—somewhere off in the woods—a questing owl, whose whereabouts we debated as its calls drifted through still night air. There’s powerful magic in quiet like that. Muscles relax, blood pressure drops, senses sharpen, the mind expands. New ideas come floating in.
So, when I was introduced to a project that aims to use the power of quiet as a force for good, I didn’t need much convincing. Como is a circa 1890 plantation house hidden deep in the Tunica Hills of West Feliciana parish. Surrounded by acres of woods and fields, it stands on a natural bluff overlooking what might be the most breathtaking stretch of the Mississippi River in the state of Louisiana. Once a working plantation and busy trading post, Como represented the center of an agricultural community during the years when the river served as the artery connecting Louisiana to the outside world. But as patterns of commerce and transportation shifted, Como’s viability declined, and as the twentieth century came and went this extraordinary site faded from memory, becoming one of Louisiana’s loveliest unknown places. By the time I first visited in early 2018 the house had fallen into serious disrepair, but in the months since, Como has undergone a major restoration and repurposing, and will open to the public as a spiritual retreat center in early 2020. The owners’ goal is to allow Como’s solitude to bring retreatants that rarest of things: a chance to escape the cognitive assault of modern existence, and to let beauty, space, and silence bring spiritual enlightenment within reach. It is an inspiring project, so I’m proud to tell you that this month Como will be the setting for the final Country Roads Supper Club event of 2019. On a December afternoon we will gather on the banks of the Mississippi River to light a fire, share a meal, and raise a glass to the next chapter in the history of one of our region’s most secret, spectacular places. I hope you’ll join us; you’ll be glad you did.
* Is Noise Pollution the Next Big Public-Health Crisis? — David Owen, The New Yorker, May 13, 2019
