The Sounds (of Silence) of Pearse Valley

I find myself waiting for the sound of anything living. Moving sights send me looking for spiders or rodents, until a split-second later I realize that I am being ridiculous. After a long night (early morning), I was just tucking myself into my tent for some sleep, and was nearly panicked by the sound of an explosion. Fearing that one of our tents had caught fire from the propane we use to heat them, I jumped out of my tent, looked around in confusion, and finally recognized the rushing, roaring sound of a glacial collapse and snowslide. The sounds that we make stand out as intruders in this landscape. The periodic use of a generator or drill, the occasional cracking of a propane stove, the squeaking of tent poles, our huge volume of tent zippers: all leap out awkwardly against the ice-cushioned stillness. Though we converse, laugh and joke, and I will undoubtedly cave eventually to the desire to sing at the top of my lungs, our conversations tend to be a bit muted. The environment seems to demand it of us on some fairly primal level. Of course, I counsel myself that perhaps an occasional burst of music from my lungs will be appropriate, since Antarctica interrupts her own silence with the occasional glacial collapse, cracking ice, or dramatic landslide. Antarctica rarely sings, but when she does, she sings with power.