Wow, what a poetic thread, already:
>>>"...you could feel the silence laying over you like an extra quilt."<<<
>>>"silence approaches - its hush penumbras back over time and is deafening! "<<< *

since silence itself cannot be *heard. No, but it can be listened to.

Interesting, about never being able to be in truly total silence. That made me think of those sensory-deprivation experiments; not something I'd care to try.
Sometimes, outdoors very early on a winter morning, I can't hear anything other than the noise I am making; no traffic, no train or planes in the distance; no wind; and above all it has to be a season where there are few birds; at least not in the abundance that warm weather brings. I have been outdoors at night when it was quiet enough to hear the wind whiffling through the owl's feathers as she flew past my head. And most nights this winter I've heard one (at least) calling in the distance.

*How I wish, sometimes, that parts of my past would fall silent...