We all get used to what we get used to, and while a change can make things get better – or worse – for a while, we then get used to the “new normal”. No, I am not particularly talking about the COVID pandemic here, despite what we have become used to the phrase “the new normal” referring to (although anyone is always free to read into what I write whatever grabs them). I have long thought about this in regard to traffic; “too long” is relative to what you expect, not to some abstract standard. I have lived in a number of places, including New York City and Chicago and San Antonio and Kansas City and Tucson. It is a given that the traffic is much worse and slower in those first two, and thus commutes to work could be considered longer. Although, in fairness, I lived much closer to work in the other cities, and, in addition, rarely drove to work or anywhere else in NYC where there is extensive public transit. Plus NYC, having developed (at least until the 1980s) as the US city most like European social democracies had 8-hour days that included a lunch hour, thus the idea of “9 to 5”, where everywhere else I lived (more reactionary, anti-worker, even Chicago) it was 8-5 – 8 hours with an unpaid lunch. This meant I could, when I was young, awaken at 8:15, dress, take the subway, pick up a bagel and coffee downstairs, and be at work by 9. It helped when I was young, and my bedtime was, um, later.
Nonetheless, it was a 45-60 minute drive to work in Chicago from a near-in suburb, as opposed to 15-20 for what was likely the same distance in San Antonio. And yet, to get to my point, it was still possible to be frustrated with traffic. If you think a trip will take you up to an hour and you do it in 50 minutes, that is great, but if you expect it will take 15 minutes and it takes 20 you get frustrated. I always wondered, though, how come Kansas City could not do economically better relative to, say, Chicago, when the people who worked there had about an extra hour and a half less time spent in traffic. One reason, of course, is that people moved farther out (bigger houses for less money), and the other is that they left for work later.
But, as usual, I digress. The point is that you get used to what you get used to, and that includes noise. I spent a good part of my youth on the Upper West Side of NYC where my father lived for over 50 years. It’s noisy there. It’s New York, which is dense and noisy. It is Manhattan, which is denser and noisier. And it was on Amsterdam Avenue, the major northbound truck route in upper Manhattan (since trucks can’t go on the highways on the east or west side). Plus fire engines. You get used to it. You sleep right through it. Even the car alarms which, when they go off, go off for a long time since it is not like the car is in the person’s driveway; their apartment could be blocks away. And the people (often inebriated) screaming in the street. Although it did get better when they replaced the glass with double panes; amazing what a difference it made.
So New York is noisy, and Amsterdam Avenue is noisier, and compared to them Chicago was quieter and so were San Antonio and Kansas City and Tucson. In SA and KC one could hear, and even listen for, the horns of the freight trains coming through at night. But even quieter is the land we have a small cabin on outside Santa Fe. The lots are 15-25 acres of mostly scrub pinyon pine and juniper and overgrazed former ranch land, the views, especially of sunrises and sunsets are spectacular, and for a long time none of the nearby lots (and there aren’t that many) were built on. The recession of 2008-09 had two big impacts. The first was that people didn’t build for a long time, and we got used to roaming the whole area, wherever we wanted, with our dogs. The second was that the rules for houses got relaxed as the non-profit that originally developed it was desperate to get anyone to buy and build, so the houses are WAY bigger than would have been permitted under the original rules. Someone is building on the lot next door and we thought it was not all that much bigger than our house – until we discovered that was the garage! The house is going up and one can see the cranes and walls from our house. The lot in the other direction has had a house with a tower for a few years. It is a characteristic that people build on top of rises to get the best views, but of course that makes their houses visible from far away, and they can begin to spoil the landscape. Even if they are architecturally attractive, which most are not. Our house is not in a depression, but just at road height and one story. There are still amazing views of mountains in the distance in almost every direction. And views of the trees, and plants, and birds right here.
But the building makes noise. There are a LOT of pieces of
heavy equipment that are needed to build a house, and they come down this
unimproved road destroying it, and making a lot of noise. And, of course, the
people who are the owners are not here to have their quiet ruined, we are. It
is still silent (except for owls and the occasionally coyote) at night, and
pretty darn quiet most of the day, when construction isn’t happening. But, you
know, you get used to it. To the quiet. So the uncommon car or truck going by
kicking up dust makes noise, and the construction equipment even more, and you
start to resent it.
And don’t get me started on the small planes making noise overhead…
It is really a pretty quiet, good, and restful life.
Let me add a sunset and sunrise pic:
