Life boils down to tidbits like sounds. These days as I walk the sidewalk—scuttling, rambling, or strutting from one place to another—I listen to the sirens. Since running (EMT talk for “working”) on an ambulance, I accidentally developed the ability to distinguish fire truck, police car, and ambulance sirens. Since studying the Doppler effect, I can tell if the sirens are approaching or withdrawing. And since learning to drive an ambulance, I know that a change in siren tune or the blast of an air-horn indicate that the vehicle is at an intersection.

I never cared much for automobiles. I still don’t. I’m not particularly proud or impressed by my siren radar. Nor am I gleeful about that fact that I always notice ambulances, no matter where I am. Before joining a rescue squad, I hardly ever processed sirens or saw ambulances because I lived in a city where there are so many of both they become part of the background. But, since moving to the countryside again and joining the world of emergency medicine, my consciousness has changed. I find myself almost subconsciously tracking the progression of sirens around my large Vermont town. A cop car went first—drugs or a car accident maybe? Just an ambulance—maybe the firetruck is out already and it’s just a medical call? Firetruck and ambulance—maybe cardiac arrest?

I started noticing that I listen to sirens because I was thrown into a different world of sounds: the soundtrack of the emergency department. The emergency department is noisy. There are the heart monitors that beep along with patients’ heart rates and alarm whenever the heart rate or oxygen levels deviate from a norm. There’s the clicking of blood pressure cuffs inflating. There’s the sound of wheels scraping as wheelchairs and beds and carts with supplies skid across the linoleum floor. There’s the clacking of those typing about what medications they gave and assessments they did. There is the thud of quick footsteps and the shuffle of walkers. Patients groan and puke and roll in their beds. And that is only the beginning.

I think all the noise is why, after a long week of work, I seek a few hours where people are scarce. It’s hard to think when there is so much to grab your attention. In the bustle of life, we can forget what the wind and the waves and the trees and the birds sound like. But more than anything else, we forget the sound of silence. I’m not talking about the strained, artificial silence of a library during finals week. When I say “silence,” I mean those moments when no one else is there to drop a pin. I’m talking about the silence that can’t be found in a city and is endangered by our social lives. If nothing else, I think true silence helps us ground ourselves and gauge when life’s racket is distracting us.

When I stroll about my town, I always hear the sirens. When I visit the woods where I grew up, I erase the ringing of so many sounds and soak in the quiet of the trees. I’m grateful that I can experience both.