Ernesto Pastor
A few weeks ago I read something that alarmed me: nine out of ten children will never experience natural silence throughout their lives. It does not refer to silence as the absence of sound, but as the presence of all the natural acoustic richness of a space, without any human trace.
Those days, the Empty Mountains project had just been awarded Quiet Trail by the american association Quiet Parks International. With this it became the first in Europe, and the first bicycle route in the world to achieve that distinction. It was not the first time that Montañas Vacías received an international award, but behind the latter there was an interesting story that sought to go far beyond the award itself.
Quiet Parks International is a non-profit association whose mission is to identify the quietest places on the planet and raise awareness about the benefits of their conservation, both for people and for the local fauna. To do this, they classify these places between protected spaces, urban parks, or routes, and study each proposal thanks to the network of volunteers they have throughout the world. These volunteers analyze the acoustic value of the area on site, and their reports help the association determine whether or not it meets the necessary parameters to achieve that certification.
Therefore, when I discovered the work of this association and its founder Gordon Hempton, I immediately felt that my area more than met those quality parameters. There began a learning process and an interest in recording soundscapes with a small piece of equipment that I bought second-hand, which soon became a fixture on my bike trips. I saw this whole process as one more step in that particular experiment that Montañas Vacías has been for the last few years. An experiment that aims to promote the enhancement of the natural resources of an area so underestimated and threatened.
On this occasion, achieving Quier Trail certification also sent a clear message of conservation, a wake-up call that could be used to make better decisions, for example, in infrastructure planning, the development of standards, or as an argument in those cases in which a high influx of 4×4 or motorcycles in environments of high ecological value could generate a problem.
The latter is precisely a complex and delicate issue. I must clarify that it is not my intention to be against these groups, in fact, traditionally, at least in this area, I have always perceived great camaraderie, camaraderie and love for nature on the part of both. I only intend to put on the table some lessons learned about the real value of a resource that, mostly due to lack of knowledge, we are leading to extinction.
There are areas of Spain, or even Teruel, where today, an excessive influx of motorcycles or 4×4s is displacing other visitor profiles such as hikers, cyclists or families with children. Faced with various warnings that this could also happen in MontañasVacías if nothing was done, I decided to take some steps to try to define more clearly the profile of the visitor to whom both this project and my philosophy are directed.
As I have stressed before, usually the events that threaten the acoustic quality of this territory do not derive from a bad intention, but from ignorance of the real value of the existence of the last places in which to experience natural silence. A natural silence of vital importance as an anchor for reconnection to our own essence and as one of the greatest tools of environmental protection. Protecting the acoustic richness of a place involves the conservation of multiple layers of value, such as biodiversity, geology, or even the light quality of an environment.
Therefore, to advance along this line, it could be interesting to propose routes, sectors or areas in which to implement some type of restriction on motorized means that would allow walkers, travelers on horseback or cyclists to live a silent experience, protecting those environments from mass tourism. , also reducing the risk of forest fires.
Last year I had the opportunity to pedal hundreds of kilometers in Scotland and England on roads restricted to traffic, and the perceived opinion about it in the towns I visited was totally positive. I have also known valid cases in the Alps or Dolomites, where there are areas that restrict the circulation of motor vehicles certain days of the week. Simply one weekly day “without noise or smoke” would have a tremendous effect of spreading awareness and raising awareness about the importance of paying a little more attention to this issue.
In short, if we know the real importance of preserving these last sanctuaries of silence, we can learn to relate in a much more responsible way with our natural spaces. Not only would it promote its protection, but it would also increase awareness of the benefits that exposure to an environment with all its natural wealth can bring to our physical and mental health. I hope that this award helps spread these ideas so that in the future more and more children can say that they have experienced that invaluable treasure that is natural silence.
@montanasvacias
www.montanasvaacias.com
Ernesto Pastor is a restless, passionate person with a unique perspective who has been able to focus on the beauty of an area considered a "demographic desert." After pedaling many years in ultra-distance road tests, he decided to seek further challenges. He is one of the leaders of bikepacking in this country and is the creator and ideologist of the mythical "Empty Mountains", a project with a true soul that transcends cycling.
Ernesto Pastor