On a family vacation, I am walking with my great nephew. He is hiking. He has his hiking vest on, the one that holds water he can drink through a long straw draped over his shoulder. That alone makes this a hike for him. We are having an adventure. After making it down the hill-sized ‘mountain’, we turned onto the gravel covered path when he tells me “we’re on their trail!” I am not sure who we are after, but I’m content to be on the side of good in this drama. I can still see our campsite at the edge of the sagebrush-covered hill. Down here, there isn’t much breeze, so I’m grateful for the line of trees sheltering us from a relentless Sun. At 4, he is interested in everything — the rocks, the dirt, and the heroic puppies that star in the story he’s been narrating the whole time. He’s quiet for a bit checking out the quality of a stick he picked up. It’s nearly as tall as he is, but lightweight and sturdy as he tests it out hitting it against the path. I focus on the sound against the gravel. The stick taps and our feet crunch along; mine big crunches, his smaller and quieter.
“Listen,” I say to him. “Do you hear it?”
He stops and looks at me with an unspoken question.
“Take a few steps. Listen to our feet.” I demonstrate with some steps.
He cocks his head and looks like he’s trying to decide if I’m serious or not.
“This is one of Gigi’s favorite sounds,” I tell him as I walk around him in a circle.
He laughs and shakes his head with a “Silly Gigi” before running ahead a few paces. We continue to wander, his new stick is simultaneously the superhero’s weapon in our continuing saga and a pointer as he notices interesting bits of nature. We don’t go far. A hike with a 4 year old isn’t a huge commitment. And, honestly, once you’ve found a good stick, the quest is complete.
We make our way back toward camp. I relish the crunch crunching on the path as the backdrop to his giggles and story. Moving up the hill, the breeze returns, and I remember the day I rediscovered wind on a different walk.
It was two two blocks from the audiologist’s office back to work. Hearing a sound that was somewhere between crumbling paper and static, I slowed my pace. What is that? Familiar and foreign at the same time, I looked for it. It’s in front of me, over my shoulder, above me. When I look up I see leaves are moving in the trees covering the street. I recognize it then, leaves rustling in the breeze, and I began to cry. With my brand new hearing aids, I was hearing wind. I had forgotten. I don’t know when I forgot. It disappeared so gradually that I didn’t realize the volume had changed.
That’s the same way the television got so loud. I adjusted the volume slowly, not noticing that the volume indicator that once hovered at 11 now pointed to 20. Were I alone, I may have kept turning it up, but repeated requests to “turn it down” finally gave way to “maybe something is wrong.” I ignored it, of course. Then, I got a cold.
The cold turned into an ear infection. When I felt better my ear remained plugged with a light ringing. An exam determined there was a lingering infection with nothing to worry about, but the machine detected some hearing loss. Medication and time healed my ear, but a referral to the audiology clinic could not be ignored.
Leading up to the appointment, I convinced myself that loud rock concerts in my past had destroyed my ears. I particularly remember being just feet away from the amplifiers at one show. They were the embodiment of long-haired, guitar-ripping, 80s rock bands. Candy. I didn’t know at the time, but I had a front-row experience to a future Guns ‘n Roses guitarist. I also had significant ringing in my ears for about 4 days. That had to be it. Spoiler alert, that wasn’t it.
A two-hour visit with the audiologist included a physical exam, hearing tests in a sound-proof studio, and a boatload of questions. My questions. The answers went something like this:
“Yes, you need hearing aids.”
“No, it’s not a result of the ear infection.”
“Yes, the hearing aids are in both ears.”
“No, it wasn’t because of a concert.”
“Yes, 35 years is young”
“No, it will not get better.”
“Yes, over time it may get worse.”
“No, I don’t know if you’ll be completely deaf.”
“Genetics.”
That last one is the cause. Genetics. Sometimes, these things just happen. Three weeks, more questions, more answers, and a large, uninsured amount of money later, I was standing under those trees hearing the wind. What else, I wondered, had I been missing?
In the years since that day with my first hearing aids I learned I’d been missing more than just wind. I’d also been missing important words in conversations. I was upset about a decision at work only to find out I’d missed an important word that completely changed the meaning. I’d missed the opportunity to hear what others had to say. Something I realized when a friend told me she’d been behind me, called my name, and I walked away without noticing. I’d been missing details in music and movies and television. And, I’d missed the soul-filling sound of nature when boots meet earth.
Now, as I watch my great nephew run the last few steps to our campsite to show grandpa his new stick, I wonder why I felt compelled to share with this beautiful child the gratitude I have for such a peculiar sound. He can’t yet understand. And, I don’t expect him to remember such a detail. “My Aunt Gigi loved the sound of shoes on rock-and-dirt covered trails.” That won’t happen. I’ll be happy if one day he remembers fondly that his Aunt Gigi played with him and loved listening to him laugh even more than she loved the sound of a path and even more than the wind.