One skill that almost every New Yorker possesses is the ability to sleep through the audio barrage of sirens and garbage trucks. These types of sounds, along with the other ambient ruckus heard throughout the night (i.e. boisterous bar patrons filing into the streets after last call, vehicles with modified exhausts and accompanying sound systems, etc..) becomes part of what gives a New Yorker comfort that everything is okay. As counter intuitive as it may seem, the non-stop bustle provides a type of mental security blanket. One takes comfort in knowing that if something goes wrong, there are plenty of people around who will notice and (hopefully) provide assistance.

In mid-March of 2020, our corner of the Catskills was still dipping into the 20s or colder at night with daily high temps that would rarely reach above freezing. There was snow on the ground and the trees were bare. As Britt and I inflated our air mattress for the first time on the floor of the living room of an otherwise empty house, I’m not sure what we really expected in terms of sleep that night. It was nice not hearing the neighbor’s TV show through the wall, but on the other hand, it was eerily quiet. As I recall, we both fell asleep relatively quickly. It had been a very eventful day and we were both exhausted.

An indeterminate amount of time after dozing off that night, Britt and I were jolted awake by the sound of coyotes howling from what seemed right outside the window! Shortly after the first couple of howls, our dog Lola gave out a loud howling response. Neither Britt nor I had ever witnessed Lola doing this before. It was pitch dark and I was so startled by this audio melee that I had to confirm with Britt that we had just witnessed our pint sized pooch giving a retort to the coyotes.

Coyotes aren’t necessarily scary, per se, especially when they are outside and we are inside. But not being accustomed to their haunting calls at such close proximity was something that was definitely going to take a bit of getting used to. Except for Lola, of course, who had apparently finally met some other canines with whom she felt worth socializing. As the remnants of winter progressed faded into spring, the coyotes were joined by other vocal nocturnal neighbors, notably several owls. On a few occasions we spotted these ornithological wonders perched in trees right outside of the windows.

After a few weeks, it was not the sounds of nature that made it difficult to sleep, but instead the lack thereof. The still silence of cold nights was terrifying. This was most likely a factor of our years of conditioning as cityfolk. As a city dweller, silence in the night is equated with someone sneaking up to murder you then dumping your body in the bushes some place that your bones will be only discovered a decade later by a troop of scouts who wandered off the trail.

Britt and I tried various methods to wean ourselves away from this mental conditioning. One thing that we tried was to stay up late watching shows on the laptop until we were too tired to keep our eyes open. This did not work. In fact, depending on what we were watching, it made the problem worse. I’m looking at you, Ozark season 3! Eventually, one of us came up with the idea to download a white noise app. Duh! We were both obviously suffering from COVID brain based on how long it took us to think of this solution. I don’t recall the name of the app, but it was a free one, and it had various nature sound options that users could mix and match. The first night we tried it out, I played the app through a little bluetooth speaker just loud enough to cut the silence, but low enough to be able to hear the owls and coyotes whenever they piped up nearby. I set it up to play a mix of ‘peepers’ (little croaking frogs and crickets), mixed with rainfall. The rainfall was mixed way down. So the peepers were mostly what we heard. We slept like babies.

Eventually the temperature warmed and spring arrived en force. The virtual peepers and rainfall were replaced by the real live versions of each, respectively. We also enjoyed being serenaded by a choir of songbirds every morning as daylight broke. Spring gave way to summer, which brought with it a different variety of sounds. By this time, we were far enough into the renovation that one of the upstairs bedrooms was finished, allowing us to move out of the living room. The large crank-out casement windows were opened in the evening to let in the cool night air, as well to amplify the rustling leaves and nocturnal critters. We had become so accustomed to the idea of all the ‘nature’ happening right outside, that even the occasional unmistakably heavy trudging sounds of a bear making its way through the underbrush was met more with a sense of awe, than that of fear. Don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t about to go out and introduce myself to our ursine neighbors face to face. But I was also no longer terrified when they came around, the way that I had been after the inaugural coyote incident.

Late summer brought the crickets and cicadas, who chirped and buzzed their way into early fall. As the temperatures dropped and the trees shed their leaves, things began to quiet down again. Having spent three full seasons enjoying the rotating nocturnal symphony of the Catskills, we eased back into early sunsets and the subsequent utter quietness that accompanied it. The nightmarish ideas of stealthy murderous trespassers were replaced by visions of gently falling snow and the little family of bunnies cozily huddled together under our shed. In case we ever did feel a bit of lingering unease, the throaty call of Lola’s friends could still regularly be heard off in the woods letting us know they were keeping an eye out.

Growing up in the Rocky Mountains, Jake Breinholt has been an avid outdoorsman and photographer for as long as he can remember. He moved to New York for school in the early aughts. After about 15 years of the desk jockey grind, he and his wife made good on their years-long dream of owning a home in the Catskills. As he’s spent the past few years fixing up the place, he’s also getting back in touch with his roots through time in the great outdoors. Check out his Personal Blog + Photography.

This column first appeared in the HVNY newsletter, This week in the Hudson Valley. Sign-up to get it delivered for free every week.

Night noises: City vs. country