THE SUMMER I TURNED SEVEN, my family spent several days at Lava Beds National Monument. This was 1965, the year we went to Oregon on our annual summer vacation. Lava Beds is way up in northern Siskiyou County, close to the border. It was our first time there and we all fell in love with the place. In fact, Lava Beds is where my life-long fondness for open, sagebrush country took root. But the thing that made the greatest impression on me during our initial visit, hands down, was the lava tubes—horizontal caves formed by tongues of red-hot lava that start to cool and harden on the outside while their still-molten interiors ooze onward. Back in those days you could rent one of those old-fashioned Coleman gas lanterns at the visitor center and explore the tubes on your own. For a boy my age, this was quite a thrill. And it was here, during one of our underground adventures, that I got to experience Total Silence and Utter Darkness for the very first time. At the terminal end of this one lava tube, we all sat down and got comfortable. My dad then turned off our lantern. No one made a peep. I remember being awestruck—no claustrophobia or panicky feelings; nothing like that. “Awed” is the word. The air—the space—felt thick and heavy. I waved my hand right in front of my nose: nothing! Having two of my six senses all of a sudden just switched off stirred up some sort of primal emotional response. Whatever it was, it was exhilarating.
Sad to say, this was both my first and last encounter with Total Silence. Due to an ear injury, since my mid-teens I’ve been listening to this high-pitched monotone drone that emanates from somewhere inside my skull: eeeeeee!-weeeeeeweeeee-weeeeee! I’ve lived with this tedious background noise for all these years now and it’s still tedious. And weird, having known all along that this “sound” is nothing more than a fabrication—a fiction contrived by my brain. In any case: no more absolute silence for yours truly.
The shrill humming in my ears is the result of stupidity: a sixteen-year-old me playing with dynamite (figuratively speaking). At school. In the back room of my chemistry class. Yes, that’s right—a classic instance of “chemistry experiment, gone awry.” As it turns out, this was perhaps my dumbest exploit ever and I paid a steep price. And am reminded of it daily. Oh well. Chalk it up to the not-fully-developed teenage brain.
My junior year of high school I took two semesters of chemistry—Chem 1A and 1B, both classes taught by my all-time-favorite educator, “Mr. Robertson,” who is right there at the top of an imaginary list of life-changing mentors. You see, my chemistry teacher, Hank Robertson, was a bit of a climber and mountaineer. Somehow, he obtained my parents’ permission and took me rock climbing during Easter break, with ropes and chocks and carabiners; the works—an experience seared into my memory banks. It was two years before I got to go again but, after that first time, I was already hooked. (“Here, ya go, kid…the first one’s free!”) To further seal my fate, starting right after classes ended in June, Mr. Robertson led a summer-school backpacking course—and that’s how I came to take my first hiking trips into the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
So you could blame a certain chemistry teacher for my dropping out of college to pursue a dangerous sport that would become my life’s chief focus for fifteen years. Which led me to move to the Eastern Sierra where I was a backcountry ranger for two decades before taking a job in the White Mountains and spending two more decades living with the bristlecone pine. [Hank Robertson passed away in 2020, age eighty-five.]
My lab partner, Fran, and I were Mr. Robertson’s pet students that year. We aced all the tests and quizzes. Both of us loved the class—the formulas and equations; breaking down chemical reactions on paper; the beautiful logic behind it all. (Fran went on to became a pharmacological researcher and professor at UC San Francisco.) We used real Laboratory Equipment: graded pipettes and Bunsen burners…test tubes and beakers and delicate balances; handled hazardous chemicals. But it was the man at the front of the room who brought the subject alive. Hank Robertson was one of those unforgettable teachers: handsome, charismatic; always neatly dressed, with that all-important twinkle in his eyes. He certainly had a way with young people—great delivery, wry sense of humor, and an infectious enthusiasm. He’d joke around between periods but during class Mr. Robertson was all business, with a look that would shut everyone up pronto. Like all great educators, he was teaching us how to think. With it came a challenge: You! Figure it out! This was an intoxicating approach for students eager to learn. Mr. Robertson made chemistry fun. He called me Tim-o-thy, and Fran, Fran-chess-ca, pronouncing our names in a mock-formal manner; clearly enunciating the syllables in a way that somehow made us feel respected, even loved. Feelings that were reciprocated.
The next fall, I very much wanted to have Mr. Robertson again. Unfortunately, he didn’t teach any other classes for seniors. But there was this one option….
During my second semester of Chem 1 there was a guy named Ron, a senior, who worked by himself in an adjoining storage room where the chemicals and surplus lab equipment lived. We both ran track (Ron, on the Varsity team; me, a lowly JV) and would see each other at practice after school. I wouldn’t call him a friend but we knew each other. It turns out that Ron was the latest of what must have been a long line of Robertsonian acolytes. He, too, got introduced to rock climbing and later became a serious climber himself. So, while our class was in session Ron was in the storage room performing experiments and getting regular class credits. “Directed Studies,” it was called. Periodically, I’d wander back there to see what my teammate was up to. Ron had his own key to a locked cabinet where the, shall we say, more interesting materials were kept. On occasion, he’d pull a glass-stoppered bottle or two out of the cabinet and put on a little demonstration for our eyes alone. I recall the time he poured out a little two-inch-tall, cone-shaped pile of potassium permanganate and lit its apex. The pile didn’t actually ignite but instead sort of smoldered, shooting up a thin stream of (probably toxic) smoke like a tiny, tiny volcano as it slowly imploded. Very cool!
So I signed up for a semester of Directed Studies, mostly to be around my favorite teacher. I was provided with an instruction manual and a copy of the key to the locked cabinet and it was off to the races. Every Monday, Mr. Robertson handed me a vial of Mystery Fluid. My task: using a variety of analytical techniques (a process called “qualitative analysis”), tease out the Mystery Fluid’s chemical constituents. The fact is that I barely remember my senior year of high school. So what exactly did I accomplish in that cramped storeroom? I really can’t say. With little in the way of supervision and no set schedule, there had to have been a lot of goofing off. There are only a few specific events I can still recall and they all center around certain, ahem, extracurricular activities.
Now, I’m fairly sure that Hank Robertson didn’t show Ron those mad-scientist party tricks. This is years before the internet arrived, mind you. As near as I can tell, the demonstrations Ron staged on my behalf were like schoolyard rhymes—things faithfully passed along from generation to generation. (In this case, by nerdy Chem 1 veterans who took Directed Studies.) One day, while class was in session, I took a break from my qualitative analysis. Prank time! With a 250ml beaker half full of nitric acid in hand, I strolled out of the storeroom and casually placed it under the hooded vent at the front of the room. There was a test that day and the room was silent. With no warning or fanfare, I switched the hood on prior to slipping several paper-thin strips of copper metal into the beaker. In moments, a dense cloud of orange smoke (which I now know to be highly toxic) began billowing from the mouth of the beaker. Quite dramatic! As expected, this caused quite a stir. With an impudent grin, I turned and fled back to my science cave. I shot a glance at Mr. Robertson who was slowly shaking his head, lips pursed—a not-necessarily-angry expression that showed subtle hints of amusement. Or so I imagined. He said not a word. I was his golden boy and could get away with stuff.
Most fun of all (thank you, Ron!) was messing around with nitrogen tri-iodide. Here’s what you do: Take a few crystals of pure iodine—little ones, roughly the size of a sesame seed—and place them in a petri dish (a shallow glass container about the size and shape of a mayonnaise jar lid). Pour in just enough ammonium hydroxide to cover them. Within minutes the shiny, metallic-gray crystals expand slightly and turn brown. Using forceps, transfer the what now look like minute clumps of mud to a second petri dish to dry. When the ammonium hydroxide evaporates, the little particles—tuh duh!— are a brand-new substance called nitrogen tri-iodide (NI₃). Note that NI₃ is a very curious compound—it’s highly unstable. So not-stable that the slightest vibration, even a loud sound, causes it to spontaneously disintegrate. That is, explode. (Instability-wise, nitroglycerine ain’t got nuthin’ on NI₃.) So here’s the fun part: while they’re still damp, one can scatter these innocuous-looking granules in classroom doorways or beneath desks. If timed just right, unsuspecting students entering the classroom or sitting down at their desks experience what feels like a tiny explosion going off underfoot—an unnerving sensation, to say the least. Confined betwixt shoe sole and floor tile, the tiny particles detonate with a sound and force equivalent to that of cap-gun “caps” going off.[1] A peerless prank! What a hoot! You should see the looks on their faces, ha ha!
An important caveat: when handling NI₃, it’s essential that one do so while the stuff is still damp—that is, before it has fully transformed into hyper-volatile NI₃.
One day, I had an inspired idea. Time to up the game: instead of those measly little crumbs, I’d prepare a substantial hunk of nitrogen tri-iodide! To that end, I took the biggest crystal in the Iodine jar and gave it the standard treatment. After transferring the thumbnail-sized brown lump to a fresh petri dish, I placed it on a shelf inside one of the floor cabinets to dry and went back to whatever it was I was supposed to be doing. What my intentions were with regards to this little hunk of trouble is a real mystery.
Somewhat later it occurred to me that the lump might be getting dry, in which case it needed wetting down. The eye-dropper was over on the lab bench along with the jug of ammonium hydroxide. I clearly recall opening the cabinet door, gingerly pulling out the petri dish, and lifting it to eye level for close inspection—to see if the lump was sufficiently moist. It didn’t appear to be very moist. In fact, it looked pretty desiccated. My last thought: I’ll just carry this over to the bench and wet it down with the eye-dropper.
Maybe all it took was my breathing on the thing but what happened next was this: like magic, the harmless-looking brown lump turned into a magenta-colored cloud comprised of nitrogen gas and vaporized elemental iodine. Several grams of nitrogen tri-iodide blew up in my face with a sharp-edged, earsplitting !!!BANG!!! that decibels-wise was probably equivalent to a deer rifle being fired ten inches from my nose.
Things got kind of fuzzy at this point. Stunned, with a still-intact petri dish in my hand, I reeled out into the classroom (An instinctive impulse, perhaps, to let everybody know I was still alive.) All eyes were on me. Mr. Robertson was slowly shaking his head, wearing a dour expression with not a hint of humor about his tightly pursed lips. If he said anything I didn’t catch the words because all I could hear just then was a piercing, high-pitched whine through ears stuffed with soft putty. Turning back into the storeroom, in shock, I saw someone’s visage reflected in a glass cabinet door: some idiot in blackface. You see, the face in the reflection was stained a brownish-purple color, with prominent white rings around both eyes—the explosion had blown my glasses off. The front of my shirt was the same color, as was my left arm. (Lucky for me, vaporized iodine isn’t a deadly poison.) Uncontained, the explosion produced nothing shrapnel-like. Still, if not for being a glasses-wearer, it’s likely that my eyes would have been damaged. As it was, my ears took the hit. Several days went by before my hearing returned to normal but once it did there was a residual, high-pitched whine droning in the background—the sound I’ve been listening to without respite for half a century.
Significant details of this fairly major life-event are lost to me. Some of them may be buried in my subconscious. For instance, I have no recollection of being reprimanded by my beloved mentor. (Mr. Robertson dressing me down? That I’d remember.) So far as I know, teachers from neighboring classrooms didn’t rush over to see what had happened. There were no repercussions: no being marched to the principal’s office; the police weren’t summoned; no call made to the miscreant’s parents. (My folks never knew about any of this.) It’s hard to believe there were zero consequences; if this had taken place today, what sounded for all the world like a gunshot coming from a classroom might have led to a full-on lockdown—years of active-shooter drills kicking in automatically…pandemonium spreading like wildfire. The po-leece definitely would have been involved. A teacher would be in hot water. I’d have been suspended, just for starters.
My my my, how things have changed! This was 1976—two or three ages ago…a bygone era where any youngster could walk into the nearest dime store[2] and, without parental consent, buy a box containing twelve rolls of cap-gun caps made with REAL GUNPOWDER. As every schoolboy knew, caps could be used to fabricate what we kids called “bombs” (e.g., home-made incendiary devices that burned, fizzled, or exploded). Incredible as it now seems, it had not yet occurred to any of the millions of parents in our great nation that twelve-year-olds oughtn’t be permitted to buy things made with REAL GUNPOWDER. Or that kids on skates or riding skateboards should maybe wear some sort of protective gear. Me: I was one of those non-psychopathic-but-very-keen firebugs who started playing with matches as soon as they were within reach. At eight, I set a neighbor’s dry summer lawn on fire with a magnifying glass (we were frying ants) and burned my hand tamping it out so as to forestall the mortification of reducing my best friend’s house to ashes. At eleven, I discovered the box of bullets for my dad’s 22 caliber pistol—well hidden, he thought—and pried the heads off a bunch of them to get at the gunpowder. At thirteen, I started a flue fire by lighting opened-up, inverted paper lunch bags that floated up the chimney like little hot-air balloons. (No idea where that idea came from.) At fourteen or fifteen, a “bomb” made of strike-anywhere match heads wrapped up inside multiple layers of tinfoil went off in my hand as I was squeezing the thing into a densely packed ball prior to hurling it against a wall. (The burns were minor.) And these are just a few choice examples. There are many more. Amazingly, I got away with most of these misdeeds. (The flue fire, which took place at around five a.m. when no one else was up, went out on its own after ten utterly terrifying seconds.) But not all of them. (Those missing bullets; that one got me in deep doo-doo.) As a budding empiricist, all through my youth I considered these and similar shenanigans to be legitimate forms of scientific experimentation. I always had this misguided sense, belied by the facts, that I knew what I was doing and was in complete control. Truth be told, this has been a recurring theme in my life—one that I still grapple with.
As for my damaged ears: for the most part, chronic tinnitus is one of those things you can just tune out. It’s barely noticeable unless I’m in a quiet room, say, or in bed at night. The problem is, I simply adore the sound of pure, unadulterated silence and have always been drawn to places and situations where you can’t hear a damn thing: grottos and caves; abandoned mine tunnels; mountaintops on windless days.
For years I lived and worked at a remote educational facility, high in eastern California’s White Mountains (“HOME OF THE ANCIENT BRISTLECONE PINE, WORLD’S OLDEST LIVING THING”). Crooked Creek Research Station, at 10,150 feet—few workplaces are as noise-free: miles from a paved road; no major flight paths overhead; very little vehicular traffic. Visitors often commented on the quiet. Some found it a little unsettling. Others loved it. Every so often, I’d tell the ones who spoke positively about the quiet how much it meant to me, personally, adding, “To me, perfect silence is a kind of music.”
I was pretty much in charge of the station but my official job-title was “cook.” Most days, I’d get up at four-thirty to make breakfast for my guests. Walking to the kitchen, usually in the dark or first hints of dawn, I’d almost always pause for a few seconds and listen to the magnificent sound of absolutely nothing. In the spring and fall, when it’s still fully dark at five a.m., I’d stand there beneath a firmament ablaze with stars and listen for the music of the spheres. These pre-dawn reveries were sweet but, alas, somewhat sullied by my brain glitch—prominent against the impeccable aural backdrop; an acoustic fly-in-the-ointment. Thanks to that bone-headed teenage stunt, the sanctity of raw silence exists only in my imagination. On the other hand, the buzz in my ears has helped me maintain a durable sense of gratitude for the miracle of hearing.
©2024Tim Forsell 12 Sep 2024
[1] I realize that readers of a certain age will have no idea what a “cap gun” is or what sort of mischief a tweenage boy growing up in the 1960s could get into with a few rolls of caps at his disposal. Google it.
[2] Another anachronism! A “dime store” is the equivalent of what is now known as a Dollar General.
No comments:
Post a Comment