Is the silence of the Great Plains to blame for ‘prairie madness’?

On particularly cold and windless days outdoors the silence is almost unbelievable. You hear your heartbeat, the snow underfoot crunches so loudly you cringe, and sounds travels so clearly and without interruption that a half-mile seems within arm's reach. It's absolutely surreal and can be very disorienting, almost like space compresses around you.

It was hard enough to live there in the 90s. I can't imagine how isolating it'd have been on a claim.

Meta: I find it cool that The Atlantic was around at that time and reporting on current events, and that it's still kicking around:

* https://www.theatlantic.com

Not many places can have "/magazine/archive/18xx/" it its URL.

A Japanese man had been working at a nearby oil town and had befriended my father in law. He wanted to be left alone in a field to enjoy the quite so he took him to a spot and left him there for a few hours. When my father in law came back, the Japanese man was sobbing.

This would have been at a time when it was nothing but native plants. Which means it would have been teeming and crawling with native insects (note that native plants will support more insect life than non-native ones - because the non-native insects that evolved to live off the non-native plants, are missing).

So it would have been noisy with insect life.

Butterflies. Creepy crawlies. Spiders. Dragonflies. Gnats. And things I'd have a hard time finding a common name for, moving around.

And then the native reptiles and snakes that eat them (remember, present at a higher density then because there was more of the food they like, and fewer people).

And the birds that feed off them, also present in higher numbers because there were no humans, no domestic cats, and no habitat loss restricting their numbers. No non-native predators at all.

Zero percent pesticides compared to what we have now, much more water (nothing having been dammed or redirected), no farming depleting nutrients in the soil, only 100% virgin high quality composted soil. And so forth.

It would make considerable noise, all the additional living biomass all these ecosystem positive changes would support.

It's pretty easy to confirm this yourself, if you go to a small nature preserve that's been restored with native plants during the summer, and just sit there and observe for 10-20 minutes. And that's only a weak imitation of the amount of biomass those prairies would've supported.

I live on a small farm in the Midwest. When my mom (who lives in NYC) comes to visit, it often takes her a few days before she can sleep well because it's so quiet at night.

Conversely, living on top of a hill, the wind absolutely screams in winter. After two or three days of constant howling wind, sometimes I feel like I'm going nuts.

I think really it's isolation and 'quiet all the time' that gets people.

I have seen little discussion of it so I'm guessing most of us don't perceive it. You might even call it woo. Nonetheless.

I could see some people becoming acclimated to it. Unable to tolerate its absence even.

Otoh, some rare weirdos might flourish in that wilderness peace.

This reminds me of a story, I believe it was told by Joseph Goldstein to Sam Harris (but I could be mistaken), about learning to meditate in noisy, urban environments. It makes me think this method and process could illustrate what the author is talking about.

I live in a fairly quiet community. I’ve become aware of people in our community through mutual acquaintances, friends and family, who have trouble sleeping at night without the television on.

From what I’ve read, this is a common problem with people who suffer from anxiety and depression. So I think prairie madness might have exacerbated already existing mental health conditions in a select group of people.

On Reddit this week, there was a popular video posting of a little boy sleeping peacefully on a chair as a loud mariachi band plays near his ears. How is this even possible?

Yes. Now go back to California!