Almost 20 years ago, my husband and I lived in an urban
community. We had a beautiful, old home that had once been the manse for the
local Presbyterian Church. The house had all that great woodwork that many
people envy, and plenty of stained glass windows. However, behind our home was
a four-lane highway, immediately next to that was an active railroad track. The
front of our house faced the beautiful Beaver River at the confluence of the
Ohio River. Just on the far side of the river was another set of active
railroad tracks. The sound of the trains coming across the river was most
certainly noticeable. Oh, yes…and we lived about 20 miles from the Pittsburgh
International Airport, so we had “flight paths” overhead. You know that old
saying, “location, location, location.” We had a beautiful home in a
not-so-great location.
I’m usually an easygoing person. Short of social injustice,
I don’t get easily riled up. However, one particular day I had an experience
that was the straw that broke this camel’s back. I was solitarily working in my
garden. Trains were running on both sides of the house, a plane was going
overhead, a neighbor was cutting grass with a power mower, and to top it off,
another neighbor was burning papers in a barrel and sparks from her fire were
falling on me.
I realized I was the victim of “sensory overload.” What is
sensory overload? According to the Psychology
Dictionary, it’s a state where our senses are overwhelmed by stimuli, where
a person is unable to process and respond to all of them.
Indeed, I was overwhelmed. Like the character from the 1976
movie, Network,
(once critiqued as the “angriest movie ever”), I became “mad as hell, and
wasn’t going to take it anymore.” So began our quest for a quieter place to
live.
Turn the page, and we are moving into an Amish farmhouse,
deep in a valley in the heart of an Amish community. We moved there in a
snowstorm, with no comfort mechanicals installed in the house. The first night
we moved in, I took our dogs out about ten o’clock at night. The silence was
startling. To be honest, the quietude sort of creeped me out. I don’t believe I
had ever been in such a quiet place before. Ever. I could actually hear my dogs
peeing. As I waited for them to finish their outdoor toileting, I detected a
sound from far away. Listening intently, I realized it was the sound of horses’
hooves clippity-clopping on the main highway almost a mile away, pulling a
buggy, transporting one of our Amish neighbors from Point A to Point B.
