Snow Day At Last
We're snowed in and the weather reports are predicting more snow is coming. As commonly happens when Seattle gets its annual snowstorm, the roads are covered in sheets of glare ice. Thusly, the buses, trucks, cars and scooters are all parked. Seattle is quiet.
I live on Capitol Hill, generally not known for its peaceful quiet days, but today, a Friday, I feel like I'm resting in a cabin nestled in a forest. It's so quiet that I can hear when a car drives by my apartment, which isn't often.
The snowstorm has brought my attention to one of the forgotten sacrifices we as a society make every day in order to drive cars in the city.
It's easy to see the sacrifice we make in air quality, it's the orange fog hanging around the waist of Mount Rainier each summer.
And while perhaps we don't always think about it, it's not difficult to imagine the amount of real estate Seattle residents have yielded to make way for roads and bridges. Just consider the land used to make way for I-5 so it can slice right through the heart of Seattle.
But when it comes to noise pollution, it's constant and can really only be appreciated when it's gone.
Unfortunately Seattle will warm up and the ice will melt, and we'll all have to jump in our cars and go back to work sooner or later, but for now, let's just enjoy the silence and maybe the next time you have to go somewhere, stop and think to yourself, "Do I need to drive?" At the very least, when you're driving down 10th Avenue East, don't honk your horn.
The snowstorm has brought my attention to one of the forgotten sacrifices we as a society make every day in order to drive cars in the city.
It's easy to see the sacrifice we make in air quality, it's the orange fog hanging around the waist of Mount Rainier each summer.
And while perhaps we don't always think about it, it's not difficult to imagine the amount of real estate Seattle residents have yielded to make way for roads and bridges. Just consider the land used to make way for I-5 so it can slice right through the heart of Seattle.
But when it comes to noise pollution, it's constant and can really only be appreciated when it's gone.
Unfortunately Seattle will warm up and the ice will melt, and we'll all have to jump in our cars and go back to work sooner or later, but for now, let's just enjoy the silence and maybe the next time you have to go somewhere, stop and think to yourself, "Do I need to drive?" At the very least, when you're driving down 10th Avenue East, don't honk your horn.
