The Silence of Elephants

Two-thirds of all communication between elephants is at a frequency below the threshold of human hearing. The silence of elephants is not silence but depth. The great weight moves, true, with infinitesimal sound; the giant feet rise and fall with the enormous quiet of night; yet the soft shift of tons, the gentle trunk-tossed water splash, the hush of uprooting tufts of grass, the dull thud of muddy, wrinkled skin, the muffled flap of ears – even the thin cord of cicadas, stretched in the dry heat of noon, snapped by the shriek of trumpets, or the brutal baritone roar – this is not the silence of elephants. The silence of elephants is wisdom spoken outside our urgent, high-tension sense. The silence of elephants is (listen) profound.

 

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