While the visual changes in season from summer to

While the visual changes in season from summer to fall are gradual and tend to creep up on me, the sounds of summer usually shut down more dramatically. One night I’m listening to chorus frogs •'pnd cicadas. The next, silence. The first frost has come.

While here in Virginia we tend to get a bit of a respite from fall after that harbinger first frost, with fall moving toward us in fits and starts, at some point the symphony of nocturnal sounds are gone for the year.

Mating deer and foxes, and the sudden sounds when night predator meets prey, provide brief, staccato accents to what in the dead of winter can become complete silence from our wild neighbors. Snow usually comes eventually and blankets even the rustlings of the few creatures that are trying to go about their nightly business.

Traffic is usually steady and noisy at most hours of the day and night on Route 522 (which is far too close to my house in Huntly) with only the moments of silence in the wee hours. During the recent snow storm, for the first time since I moved in, I actually heard no sounds all night — from traffic or wild things — except the slight clicking noises as snow turned to sleet and blew against my windows.

In city or country, sudden silences can be unnerving. When the silence is most intense, during snowfall, I’m always reminded of Conrad Aiken’s eerie story, “Silent Snow, Secret Snow,” in which a 12-year-old boy gradually withdraws from reality, his world engulfed and muffled by a deep, peaceful snow that exists only in his mind. I read it when I was about the same age, and it gave me quite a different slant on the hush of falling snow.

With still no sound but the occasional plow along the highway on the day following the storm, I began digging out. Pretending I didn’t have deadlines or Internet connections to clients, I concentrated on the physical labor of shoveling out 1,000 square feet of snow, stopping occa