This day is not intended as a “let others speak” day. Apparently it is intended to call attention to “acoustic ecology”—the natural and manmade sounds around us.

This is intended to be more of an outdoor thing more than a “sit in bed and listen to your air conditioner” thing. It’s not a bad exercise, but it’s also an interesting test of other things—how long you can keep your attention focused on external sounds, whether you can stand being alone with your thoughts, how long it takes for you to be more grossed out by the sweat rolling down your back than charmed by the birdsong in your ears.

The kid and I used to do this when he was little. I would drag him outside, make him splat in the yard and close his eyes, and then tell me what he heard. As if it wasn’t abundantly clear that he had ADHD simply by looking at him for 30 seconds, these little exercises would have removed all doubt to any professional diagnosers. He would sit calmly for maybe 30 seconds, listing, “Wind. Birds. Dog barking.” Then he’d pop his eyes open and ask why we were doing this. I’d tell him I could hear cars, squirrels, the neighbor’s sprinkler. He would take an impatient breath, close his eyes again, and say, “Something humming (the heat pump). More wind. The same dumb dog.” And then you could practically see him vibrating, so I’d give up and tell him to take a lap around the house while I closed my own eyes and listened some more. He’d pelt away, run two laps for good measure, and then go back in the house and spend the next several hours happily and deeply absorbed in Star Wars minutiae too obscure for scholars eight times his age.

Conversely, the hubs and I would occasionally go for hikes in the woods, which in Virginia means a lot of hills and humidity. While he was quite content to walk in silence and speak only occasionally and reverentially, I found myself wishing I had headphones, a chatterbox companion, anything to distract me from the sameness of the trees, the buzzing of the insects that made me itch by association, the sweat pouring off me in all kinds of yucky places, and my own extremely unattractive wheezing and panting that drowned out pretty much everything else.

I’m still not a fan of bugs or sweating, but I will say it is nice to sit outside of an evening and close my eyes. These days I hear more cars and fewer bugs—and, at a certain time of year, the perpetual hum of grain elevator heaters. But in between, there’s still wind, and birds, and occasionally a dog barking.