Pro's and Con's of Living Where it is Quiet, How to Find a Quiet Retreat?

[sky]

The Stay at Home Order has resulted in a much quieter living environment. I live in a small town, which is not particularly loud, but I am enjoying the quiet time very much.

I am thinking about spending time in quieter places, either camping or perhaps buying land and building a small shelter.

Ideal location characteristics:

Adjacent to large areas of public land
Distant from interstate highways
Distant from truck routes
On a gravel road which is not used much
Hopefully minimal recreation use (ATVs, motorcycles or snowmobiles)

In the past I have camped out in national forests and enjoyed the quiet, but also noticed a few negative things.

Rural areas seem to have a lot of loud vehicles
Gunshots are heard long distances
Sound travels further when it is quiet, so even if the decibels are lower, one's perception is sharper. I heard a train one night while camping and the closest train track was 6 miles away.
Recreation in rural areas often seems to be noisy
Long distance to provisions and services
Mining and farming equipment can be noisy
Poor road maintenance
Insects!

If you were searching for a location for a quiet retreat, what would you be looking for?

Farmland? Woodland? Desert? Swamp? Waterfront?

Where would you go to start looking for a retreat location?

[J_]

Extra dangers: (intensive) farmland is loaded with pesticides, industrial/intensive animal and bird farms are breeding grounds of viruses, also spread by flies, (airborne) pesticides fly around even around tulip-bulb farms, fruit farms. Polluted water because of the fecal overproduction of the animals and that insect killing stuff.
TL DR: every modern/industrialized food production land is to be avoided....you do not want them as neighbors in at least 50/100 miles.

[jacob]

The quietest place I've ever been to hit all your ideal location points. I was visiting one of the very first ERE readers in her "homestead" in NorCal. It was so quiet I could hear the blood rushing through my ears---when too quiet is actually loud. I think part of it was that the entire house ran on 12V so no 60Hz hum nor any refrigerator sounds. I think the nearest neighbors were maybe 1/8 miles away. The house was in the middle of a forest about 2-3 miles from a very rural high-way. Very occasionally a car would drive by on the dirt road that connected all these dwellings. I did see various ATVs at the other houses, but nobody seemed to be practicing "motorsports" to any noticeable degree. At times when the water was high, one could hear the gurgling creek that the house drew its water from. There was no wind, so no rustling leaf sounds.

The furthest place I've even been [away from civilization] was in a cabin in the desert of NV about 150M from the nearest gas station. I don't remember it being quiet but that's perhaps because there were three other guys, 1 ATV, 3 motorcycles, 2 trucks, and large amounts of guns present. The views of the night sky were spectacular. It was definitely possible to hear occasional shooting from others as well although we only ever saw one other person/car. Dirt tracks everywhere---I don't recall hearing any engine sounds (other than our own).

[IlliniDave]

Even as an introvert I get the "too quiet" phenomenon. My cabin is very quiet but not "nowhere". It's on the entry way to the wilderness, and the border lakes allow small motors so I'll here a little boat buzz by in the distance a couple times a day. And the critters make a good bit of noise, especially the birds and night insects. And the wind in the trees, and on the water. Plus I do have "neighbors" so we chat occasionally. Seems like there's always a chainsaw at work off in the distance in that corner of the Northwoods as well. And I have a fridge and water heater that make their little occasional noises.

But at times, maybe when the air calms before a storm, it gets still. The phraise "eerily quiet" is almost a cliche. Normally I perk up and get energized when it happens. Sometimes though it unsettles me. I'll often play some classical music off the public radio station or noodle around on my guitar.

Get into the wilderness it's a different story. Critters, wind, weather, and whatever noise you make is all you'll hear.

But encountering "too quiet" doesn't happen often with any amount of wildlife around, I just wind up listening to things that would usually be lost in the noise.

I've thought about buying a tract of land in the area up there in an even more remote spot and maybe building a permanent campsite or something for when the few dozen people allowed to enter the park from my lake each week and a similar number leaving get too annoying.

[George the original one]

If the forest has harvesting, you'll hear chainsaws & hydraulics from a mile away.

Background wind noise can mask manmade sounds, but storm noises are more alarming. Sounds of streams and oceans are good masks, too.

Brick walls stop sounds from passing into the interior of a building. Windows will amplify exterior sounds, particularly wind.

Check airport locations and flight paths. My Oregon City house was in a mostly quiet location, but the commercial flights into Portland from the south were *exactly* overhead. 8p-9p was the worst.

Is it better to be above or below the noise source? Hmm, probably below if you've got something like a stream to mask other noises.

[theanimal]

Most of the noise nowadays is in cars and planes. The sound of cars is a major negative for me. I purposefully find locations away from major roads, this is likely much harder to do in higher populated areas. You have to consider who your neighbors are too. You could be in a secluded spot with very little traffic, but next door (even if it's a few acres away) you could have a neighbor who loves running chainsaws, blasting music, using heavy machinery etc. etc.

I would argue that one of the quietest places in the world is here in Interior/Northern Alaska in the winter time. The entire landscape is frozen and blanketed by snow. There is almost never any wind and very little wildlife. If you are in an area with no cars or get even just a few miles off any road, you will hear only sounds made by yourself. It is definitely worth experiencing.

When I lived in the Arctic, the entire community was off grid and the only regular sounds were wind turbines and the occasional truck travelling on the road across the valley up to the oil fields. In the winter time, you could hear a soft hum of other people's generators when outside. But inside the cabin, with wood heat and hardly any electronics, absolute quiet. I could hear people on a tour talking at night from the front door of my cabin that were a few hundred yards away. It really changes your way of thinking and being, at least it did for me at the time. And then there are nice bonuses like hearing wolves howling up the valley and being able to hear them as they move for miles...

[Alphaville]

My cabin is quiet and fantastic when nobody is around but when people fire up the tractor or decide to test out the AK-47 in some field nearby it can be a reeeeeeeeeeal nuisance. Or a cow decides to wander past your window at 4am: MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

I'm quieter in a city. Not joking. Everything blends in nicely, except for the open-exhaust cars and motorcycles: curse them.

If I had a totally free choice I'd be by the ocean. The sound of splashing waves is super-soothing and covers up a lot of defects in the aural environment.

[Ego]

The title asks about the pros and cons of living where it is quiet. Many here have touched on the pros, so I won't bother. The cons are more subtle. Going someplace quiet can be a wonderful break from a noisy place but - as I've mentioned elsewhere - living somewhere quiet can make a person dependent on the silence.

From an anti-fragile perspective, is it more efficient to control a large enough environment so that you can ensure it is silent or is it better to learn to live with and maybe even enjoy whatever loud ruckus your environment blasts in your direction?

[chenda]

Since the lockdown everything has become so quite where I live (small city 35 000 people) I stand on the balcony in the evening and theres usually passing cars, aircraft, distant groan of the motorway, pedestrians, drunken revellers walking back from town.

All that's gone, its deathly quite, so quite I can hear the river which is half a kilometer away. At first it was eiry, but I've grown to like it.

Short video on how noise has changed ancient cities:

https://youtu.be/5FnJhLGp47k

[Alphaville]

oh for cons i can tell you the about horrible pricey and capped satellite internet and the stultifying social experience that is to be the town’s brainiac. please kill me—i wanna learn from my betters, thank you very much!

what did aristotle write about the excellent life? no bible or alex jones quotes please.

no, i’m serious... it’s nice to be challenged.