Can You Hear the Sounds of Nature
Can you hear the sounds of nature?
Listening takes effort--clearing our minds
Sounds almost unheard when you were concentrating on someone’s word
Ask them to join you in focused listening
Fewer sounds you and they will be missing
A woodpecker’s peck-peck-peck, the hopeful expectation of a songbird’s call
Wendell Berry wrote: “For a time, I rest in the grace of the world and am free.”
Perhaps we can be like Berry—you and me
It takes patience to take this time
Our habit is to rush
Can we make a habit of being in nature
And truly hearing its sounds?
Forrest W. Heaton September 2024
Quotations. In my Oxford Dictionary of Quotations there are many appropriate quotations but they are often too hard to find thus the internet from which the following come:
“The clearest way to a forest universe is through a wilderness.” John Muir
“If you personify elements of nature you suddenly don’t feel alone. The sun, the wind the other living things all accompany us.” Mary Oliver
“Adopt the pace of nature. Her secret is patience.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
How important is a constant intercourse with nature and the contemplation of natural phenomena to the preservation of moral and intellectual health.”
Henry David Thoreau
Forest Bathing. Are you familiar with “forest bathing”? I was not. My wife, Mary, forwarded a recent NPR article on “forest bathing” We encourage you to check this out. Doing this is known to decrease blood pressure and reduce the stress of every day life .The article points out “The idea that spending time in nature is not new. Most of human evolutionary history was spent in environments that lack buildings and walls. But today most of us spend most of our life indoors, or at least tethered to devices. Perhaps the new forest bathing trend is a recognition that many of us need a little nudge to get back out there.”
Please consider this post your “little nudge.”
Topic. Having asked two friends about the topic for our opening post for the year 2025, one recommended “Freedom” re the upcoming Nov24 election. We appreciated our friend’s suggestion of “Freedom” but discarded the the idea as we have strictly avoided politics as a topic. There is no question we all need to do some repair work on our relationships and need to become closer as “Americans” (a topic about which we will write in the new year. It will not be our lead for the year but we will include it.) Our second friend recommended: we “challenge readers to get out into nature” and let it wash over them. We decided to accept that recommendation as it was closer to our thinking about the blog originally.
Mary Oliver. One person who got out into nature very well was America’s best selling poet before her untimely 2019 death, Mary Oliver. Early in her poetic career she elected to go out into nature and and write. Her topics were what she experienced. We’ve included below Mary Oliver’s Wild Geese in case you’ve not read it before.
Wild Geese
You do not have to be good
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert repenting
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
Love what it loves
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
Are moving across the landscapes,
Over the prairies and the deep trees,
The mountains and the rivers,
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
Are heading home again
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
The world offers itself to your imagination
Calls to you like the wild geese—harsh and exciting –
Over and over announcing your place
In the family of things.
Mary Oliver
Poetry. I have listened to the call of the wild geese during their migration but never considered writing a poem such as the above. This highlights the strength of poetry--We hear things differently and choose different words to write what we mean to write. The differences are to be celebrated. This was an important experience for Mary Oliver as they have been for me. Getting out into nature was a joy for both of us.
“In Balance with Nature”. For those of you who are unable to go into the wilderness but wish to hear the sounds of nature we recommend viewing the recently released movie, Songs Of Earth. Last night the CCRC where Mary & I live played the movie in the Cinema. We ran into friends going to the movie having read its reviews (all outstanding). Thus, by chance, we went. An internet “synopsis” says: “Experiencing Norway’s adventurous valley, Oldedalen in Nordford, with Olin and his 85 year old father, this is where he grew up and where generations before him have lived in balance with nature. Viewing this movie almost takes you there, sounds and all.