Usually when I'm walking anywhere, I have my headphones in and am listening to music. On these occasions to Schenley, I'm more aware of the sounds around me. Crossing the street first to the path leading down to the pond, the familiar rush of car winds and tires are around, with horns in the distance and sometimes children squeals from different areas of the park around. Descending the first set of steps on the hill, cut into the earth among the plants (I pause to wonder if I consider this now a part of 'nature'), I'm aware of my own footsteps, my leather gloves squeaking slightly on the metal railing, the beginnings of birds. The second stairs let me forget even more so the world left above, and the stream water a little below my feet bubbles over pebbles and drips down it's pathway. Rustles of leaves and brush, more tweets from birds flitting around the branches, scurries of animals darting quickly away from the approach of something foreign. Winding around the path toward the water, a wind bristles past the pine trees and around the hollow in my ear, a dog at the far end of the pond barks a playful dare at its owner teasing it with a stick. With each step I feel my ears being less in tune to the sounds of a busier world I'm leaving behind, and encased instead with the small music of the park.
I am thinking about those sound machines people often use to ease themselves in to sleep. White noise to fill the silence, and why it is so comforting. Sometimes stillness and quiet can be too big, so consuming it makes your mind fill with even more noise than what's being heard around you. Even in the silence of the forest, you're never completely surrounded with an all consuming blanket of quiet. The natural world has its own soundtrack, and though I don't own one, I'm pretty sure most of those sound machines feature a variety of nature settings: babbling brook, rainforest, field crickets, etc. I think because we are so ingrained with the sounds of where we've come from, this is the most comforting breed of the white noise. Being surrounded with what our bodies know to listen to, what our ancestors years and years ago were constantly surrounded by, what they heard as they eased their own minds into sleep, is the most delicious form of comfort. Walking around the pond, staring up at a blueing sky and feeling the wind chill my face, the sounds around the air are a music all their own.
I wonder about the trees.
Why do we wish to bear
Forever the noise of these
More than another noise
-Robert Frost
Haley,
ReplyDeleteYou have an interesting contrast working iny our blog about the silence and sound, and more implicitly between connection and disconnection between individual and enviroment.
"Usually when I'm walking anywhere, I have my headphones in and am listening to music. On these occasions to Schenley, I'm more aware of the sounds around me."
IT is interesting how the blog/a walk/ a trip in the park opens our mind to notice other things. It forces us to break out patterns and routines. Even without the headphones, we can just listen to the endless monologue of our brains.
I like the moment where your awareness seems to shift gears:
"Descending the first set of steps on the hill, cut into the earth among the plants (I pause to wonder if I consider this now a part of 'nature'), I'm aware of my own footsteps, my leather gloves squeaking slightly on the metal railing, the beginnings of birds."
There are lot of interesting contrasts in here and I'm especially interested in your consideration of when the human-made becomes "natural." There is often a blurriness between the two, and everything about this park seems to illustrate that from how you've described it.
ReplyDeleteOh, and I have one of those sound machines (really helpful for babies...), and they are full of nature sounds. Some of those sounds are too *noisy* for me, like birdsong. But the ocean waves? Perfection :-)