There are many advantages to living in the country rather than in a town. One is the quality of sounds one hears. Even during the daylight hours, the sounds that echo through woodlands and across fields are more resonant and appealing than those heard in town. But it’s during the night that the special sounds associated with country living are heard.

Even as a very young person growing up in a town, I wasn’t afraid of the dark. Having never seen a ghost, I don’t believe in them. I remember walking through a graveyard in my neighborhood at night on regular basis to get to a friend’s house.

But the sounds I heard back then were those of a town: sirens, car horns, alarms, doors being slammed and locked. Having lived for the past 30 years in an isolated cove deep in the mountains, I’ve come to appreciate the night sounds that have become an integral part of my nocturnal world.

For whatever reason, I often wake up at about 3 a.m. and stay awake for about an hour before falling back to sleep. Sometimes I think about what happened the previous day, replaying events in my mind like a video. Sometimes I think about what’s on my agenda for the coming day. As often as not, however, I just lie there in bed listening to the night sounds.

This time of year, I can hear logs shifting from time to time as they slowly burn down in the woodstove. In a month or so, when cold has truly descended, the oak floors will creak in the grip of winter. Ice-laden tree limbs up on the hillside outside my bedroom windows will sometimes fall with a sudden crash, followed by an eerie silence.

The creek that runs through our valley passes within 50 or so feet of the house. Having lived beside this waterway for so many years, I often don’t pay attention to it during the daylight hours. It’s almost as if it isn’t there. But at night the creek pervades my consciousness. The dark water whispers a variety of sounds as it glides here and there, purling over the stones and boulders on its long journey down out of the high Smokies into the lowlands and, ultimately, to the Gulf of Mexico. It seems to be speaking to me in low tones that I could decipher, if I just knew the language.

Twice within the last week, the baying of hounds has sounded along the ridge high above our house. I always wonder what they’re pursuing and feel sympathy for the coon, fox, ‘possum, wild hog, bear, or whatever animal they might be after. But I must admit that I also enjoy the rollicking, rich, yodeling sounds the hounds make in the excitement of the chase. And I can well understand why many hunters claim that listening to their dogs is the best part of their nighttime ventures.

Owls emit the quintessential nighttime sounds. Rural people used to interpret owl calls as an indication that something bad was going to happen, maybe even a death in the family. The ancient Cherokees associated owls with witchcraft and evil medicine. But, to me, their calls are soothing.

Each year my wife, Elizabeth, and I hear three different owl species on our property. There are the “hooting” calls of the great horned owl. The barred owl seems to be saying, “Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you-all?” Our favorite, the screech owl, is somewhat misnamed, because it doesn’t screech. The call is a soft, tremulous, quavering whistle. I sometimes go out on the back deck in the middle of the night and imitate them, often attracting the little critters to within 10 feet, where they perch in the shrubbery giving answering calls, until they weary of the game and flutter away.

But mostly I just lie there in the bed, listening to the owls and the other night sounds, until I drift away and fall asleep.

George Ellison wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a selection of his Back Then columns was published by The History Press in Charleston as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 28713, or at ellisongeorge@cs.com.