by Lynne Lawrence, UNH Cooperative Extension Master Gardener Volunteer

The northwest wind screams through the tree line behind my home. When the gusts hit 40, windows rattle and the metal roof hums. Several hundred pounds of snow and ice thundering off the roof­an unmistakable roar, terminating in a loud thump-­the sound of a giant heart that beats once and then is still.

Summer thunderstorms and winter snowstorms are ubiquitous, but "thundersnow," the unlikely combination of the two, makes for an otherworldly strangeness­-a wildness that draws you to the window in fascination but keeps you hiding just behind the curtains. Requiring an unusual combination of warmer surface temperatures and very cold upper level air, it is a dramatic reminder of the powerful orchestration that is winter; complete with cannon and fireworks, the living climax of the 1812 Overture.

Ice storms, on the other hand, are all too common in New Hampshire and have sounds of their own. Who can forget December 2008, when some sinister magic transported us from our living rooms to an artillery range?

Generations-old pine trees cracked like rifle shots as their seventy-foot-tall trunks split and toppled like a giant's game of pick-up- sticks. Telephone poles went down like dominoes, trailing their snaking, arcing wires behind them. Huddled in front of our fires, we marveled at the turmoil.

The next morning the sun came up on a transformed world of strange beauty and glittering devastation. The surviving trees clattered against each other and groaned under their ice coats as we watched in trepidation. We walked out among the ice-clad trees, giving wide berth to the leaners.

Even the smaller, more intimate sounds of winter are big in their own way: the crunch of boots on intricately-structured snow when it is cold and dry, the swoosh of snowshoes, the nearly silent shifting of the branch just over your head as it drops a tiny mountain of soft, white snow onto the back of your neck.

Some snowfalls happen in still, windless air, the settling snow laced with sound-muffling air pockets. The "good morning" you shout to your neighbor falls flat at your feet; a 2,000-pound car sneaks up behind you unnoticed. The clang of a metal trashcan lid becomes a dull thud, the vibrations dropping into the snow.

Instead of careening off packed earth and rocks, sound waves skim lightly across the snow's surface, pushing air down into the empty spaces, making the world a softer, more private place. There is a magic window of time where winter creatures hunker down and people stay indoors reading a good book, creating a comforting soup, or listening for the next weather report. This snow silence has its own spiritual quality­-a pause, a waiting, a time to savor because it will so soon be overwhelmed by the noisy re-emergence of all that must continue.

Outside, leaning on your shovel-­that seems one of the best ways to enter the silence­-you become aware of hidden creatures who share the world. A perfect line of tiny footprints appears in the snow behind you, running down the driveway, then dropping out of sight into the subnivean world below--a secret society of small mammals that exist in the layer of relative warmth between the frozen earth and the bottom of the snowpack.

Six feet above that level, we are too removed to hear the rustlings of its inhabitants--mice, moles and voles. But those with keener senses, operating closer to the ground, like coyotes and foxes, are well aware of this invisible stirring, using it as an audible signpost to the next meal. With uncanny accuracy they dive into the snow cover, ending some tiny creature's life in a whirlwind of snow crystals, yelps and squeaks. We aren't sorry for this small demise; it represents one less tunnel through our spring lawn, one less summer vegetable eaten from the ground up.

Simon and Garfunkel had it right. There is a sound of silence­-not just the absence of sound, but the positive presence of stillness, palpable, exhilarating. Depending on our lifestyles, we may not miss that deep, insulating blanket that defines our world from November 'til March, but when its profound stillness is missing, we long for the peace and centering it brings.

It's what makes us stop when the driveway is half-shoveled, not just to rest aching muscles, but to listen for that absence of sound, that invitation to walk deeper into the woods, to inhabit, for just a little while, that world where no one dares, or wants to, disturb the sound of silence.