I dont really know how to start this so im just gonna start typing and hopefully it makes sense by the end lol.
I found an old radio tower on the hill behind my town. I go there sometimes when school gets to be too much and i just need to breath. Its rusted and half falling apart and honestly looks like something out of a horror movie but theres a gap in the fence that i dont think anyone else knows about. Maybe they do. I dont know. It feels like mine though, which is probably a selfish thing to say about something that isnt yours but i think everyone has atleast one place like that. A place that feels like it chose you back somehow.
Anyway. I went there one morning like three weeks ago and the tower was humming. Actually humming, like vibrating almost. I stood there for probably five whole minutes just staring at it like an idiot. which sounds really dumb i know but i promise it was weird. the sound wasnt loud or anything. it was more like — you know when someone in the next room is watching tv and you can just barely here it through the wall? Like that. Quiet but definitly there.
There was a door at the bottom of it. It was unlocked.
I went in.
I KNOW. horror movie behavior 100%. my friend cass would of literally killed me if she found out. But i wasnt scared and thats the weird part because im scared of like everything normally. Im scared of presentations, im scared of asking waiters for extra napkins, im scared of texting first. But walking into that little concrete room felt strangely okay. I cant explain it better then that sorry.
Inside there was this one panel that was still on. Everything else was dark and dead but this one little green light was just blinking away like nothing was wrong. And there was a speaker, small one, and thats where the humming was coming from. I sat down on this random wooden chair that was already in there (which in hindsight is also a little creepy but whatever) and I listened properly.
And then i realized. its morse code.
Okay so when i was like 12 i went through this whole phase where i taught myself morse code because i was obsessed with this book about shipwrecks and i thought i was gonna be like an explorer or something when i grew up. Spoiler i am not an explorer. I am a junior in highschool who is failing pre-calc. But i kept the morse code knowledge and honestly its the most useful thing ive ever learned which says alot about the rest of my education if im being honest.
So i decoded it. Took me like fifteen minutes and i had to use my notes app because i kept second guessing myself. The message said:
STILL HERE. WONDERED IF ANYONE WOULD COME. TOOK ELEVEN YEARS. NO MATTER. LISTENING IS ENOUGH.
I cried so fast. Like embarassingly fast. Before i even fully processed what i had read my eyes were already doing the thing. I think it was the "no matter" part that got me. The idea that this thing had been sitting there waiting for ELEVEN YEARS and the first thing it wanted to say wasnt "why did you take so long" it was just — its okay. im not mad. listening is enough.
I looked it up later. The tower was built by this man named Harlan Voss who died back in 2013. He was a radio operator, never got married, no kids, spent basically his hole life on that hill sending and recieving signals. And right before he died he set up an automated transmitter to keep running after him. In his last journal entry he wrote — and i found this in the county archive because yes i went to the county archive like a complete nerd — he wrote that a person listens their whole life and then stops, and he thought that was a shame. So he built something that would keep listening for him, just incase someone came along who needed to hear it.
i have been thinking about that every single day since.
Because here is the thing. Im seventeen. And i already know what it feels like to say something and not be sure it landed anywhere. You know that feeling? When you post something or tell someone something that feels really big and important to you and then just. nothing. or like a "haha yeah" response. And you dont know if the thing you said was dumb or if nobody cared or if they just didnt see it or what. You just dont know. And you kinda have to keep going anyway.
That feeling is so lonely. And i dont think its just a teenager thing, i think its a human thing, but i am a teenager so thats my frame of refrence right now.
But Harlan. He built something that listened. Even after he couldnt anymore. He left this signal running on the off chance that someday, somebody would climb the hill and sit down and here it. And i did. I actually did. By complete accident on a tuesday morning because i skipped first period and needed somewhere to sit.
And maybe thats all any of us are really doing. Writing things, posting things, saying things out loud in empty rooms. Sending signals. Hoping the frequency finds somebody. Not even asking for much — just: did you recieve this. do you copy. is anyone out there.
im not gonna fix the typos in this by the way. i always fix my typos before i post anything because im scared people will think im stupid and i am so tired of being scared of that. So this is me, typos and all, at 1:47am on a thursday when i should definetly be sleeping.
Harlan waited eleven years.
I think i can handle a few typos.
still here.