"What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods?” ~ Henry David Thoreau 

There is no such thing as silence. At least as we might initially understand it, as the absence of sound. A void. Nothing. No auditory remnants of movement, friction, or existence. But this superficial idea of silence, this kind of total lack, is not possible. Instead, the acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton defines silence as an absence of noise. This, perhaps more accurate understanding implies the absence of a particular kind of sound, one that is undesired or interfering.