In my last post on how we listen (Part 1), I said that I thought listening might be the key skill to develop for deepening relationships. And, that listening involves much more than hearing sounds with our ears. True listening uses all of the physical senses, as well as mind, attention, and heart. I introduced the Chinese symbol for listening and showed how to use it to practice listening to other people and ourselves. In this post (Part 2), we’ll explore what it means to listen to the land.
Recently, I joined an online group called the Kinship Photography Collective, and they currently have a project called Listening to the Land, based on a visual exploration of the Blue Ridge Bartram Trail in North Carolina. Photographers are invited to celebrate the trail's biodiversity through their own unfolding relationship with the land. They are asked to honor the history of the land, the wisdom of the indigenous peoples of the region, and to see the land as alive and waiting to be met, understood, and listened to.
To me, this is very much in line with the approach of contemplative photography and what I was trying to accomplish with the Seeing your Place project - deepening a relationship with the land through learning about its geological and cultural history, and also closely observing patterns of weather and climate, flora and fauna, and culture.
What does it mean to listen to the land when we don’t speak the same language? Below, I’ll share some of what I’ve discovered about listening over the past ten years of nurturing a relationship with the land where I live.
The Grammar of Animacy
“To be native to a place, one must learn its language.” – Robin Wall Kimmerer
When you listen to a person, you listen to their words, notice their body language, and feel what’s underneath the words – needs, desires, motivations, woundedness. The land doesn’t speak in words, but instead through sounds, colors, movement, and evidence of trauma and health. More specifically, through plant fragrances, animal tracks, bird song, the wind; even the force that causes a flower to bloom. These types of “voices” are what Robin Wall Kimmerer calls ‘the grammar of animacy,’ or the language of a place.
The word animate here means “possessing or characterized by life, alive, a living thing, full of life” (Merriam Webster). Generally, we think of humans, plants, and animals as animate. Kimmerer argues that rocks and water, mountains and fire, songs and places, also have elements of animacy, of aliveness. We just can’t see their growth and change with our eyes.
With this grammar of animacy in mind, how does one begin to listen to the land?
The first step, it seems to me, is to see the land as alive and worthy of attention. It’s also about engaging the art of perception, how and what we see before language, ideas, and concepts enter the picture. In other words, to feel the land, through our physical senses and emotions.
The mind comes in through the quality of attention we bring to the listening. Going in with no goal or objective or agenda, except to listen. Letting go of preconceived ideas or judgments. Open and ready to receive.
Being patient. You might have to take daily walks and/or visit the same place on a regular basis to start seeing subtleties and change and hearing what the land has to say.
Being inclusive, where everything is worthy of attention, everything is allowed to speak, no matter how familiar or ordinary.
Bringing humility and a sense of wonder and a desire to learn from the land.
Noticing how the land speaks through movements and gestures.
Seeing the relationships and interdependence between the many different elements of the land.
Noticing where you feel emotional resonance with the land and how the land is reacting to you.
Seeing where the land is thriving and where it is not and knowing why that is and what needs to be done about it.
These are the basics. Now, let’s go a little deeper.
Using our Physical Senses
Using the physical sense of hearing sounds with our ears is one way (but not the only way) of listening. While we already hear familiar sounds every day, it may be necessary to slow down or be still and silent to hear more subtle sounds.
Sound ecologist Bernie Krause has been recording sounds in the wild for more than fifty years. He says that every organism “produces an acoustic signature,” often a voice, but it could also be something else. For example, my daughter heard an unusual call from a hummingbird in her yard. She learned that it was a special mating call made by the bird rubbing their legs together.
Krause explains that every place has its own unique biophony, the collective soundscape produced by all living organisms residing in a particular place. As I approach the lake in my town, I recognize the familiar sounds of waves lapping the shore, gulls calling, ducks quacking, geese (and trucks) honking, as well as people talking while picnicking or walking. Even the wind rustling through the trees makes a particular sound in that place that is familiar to me.
You can become an “ear witness” to the land by noting the natural sounds, like wind in the trees or grasses, water in a stream, waves at the ocean shore, the calls of birds and animals, even the movement of the earth. And, of course there are also human-generated sounds - from music, language, or theater to machines. Noise falls into this category.
We can listen with our other physical senses too - through tasting (air, water, food), smelling (plants and animals, air and water, agriculture, foods), touching (ground, water, textures), and, of course, seeing.
We can listen by closely observing body language, movement and change, especially through gestures. Gestures are true and unique expressions of the moment, without artifice; real and intimate. They arise spontaneously through a little known inner sense called proprioception.
Our physical senses take in information from the external world, while this sense gathers information from our body and has to do with how we orient ourselves and move in the world. When you move, you’re making a gesture that communicates something. This is the language of your body, a type of conversation.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, who was a philosopher of phenomenology (the study of being), writes that meaning is communicated through these spontaneous gestures of the body in response to something in the environment. He says that all phenomena, not just humans, are animate and expressive. Everything gestures. Trees sway, flowers tilt towards the sun, concrete cracks, and rivers flow. I’m always touched by the way grasses sway in the breeze.
Gestures often express a feeling. Think of how you might raise a hand to protect yourself in the face of potential threat or smile in response to seeing someone you love. My daughter tilts her head up and to the left in her own way when she’s considering something.
Gestures in the landscape are often subtle. Take a long look at the gesture of the grapevine leaf in the photograph above. It is the living expression of that leaf in that moment of time. Noticing the gestures of everything animate is a crucial part of listening to the land.
Using Empathy and Imagination
Thomas Berry, a Passionist Priest and ‘geologian,’ wrote that “the universe is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects.” When Berry listened to the land from this standpoint, he knew what had been lost and what needed to be recovered, mainly an intimate relationship with place.
Environmental writer Barry Lopez speaks about the more-than-human world in the context of it looking back at us. It’s a mutual encounter, a relationship just like any other. Whatever you’re looking at is also looking back at you.
Listening with the heart is about recognizing that we don’t live in isolation, but rather within a web of relationships and interdependent with everything else. The land is our kin, and as such, there must be a form of reciprocity, a give and take; a call and response, a dance, happening in each moment. This isn’t something that can be explained, only acknowledged.
Noticing gestures may evoke feelings in us. We may see beauty and experience wonder or see evidence of trauma, evoking grief. Acknowledging those feelings is necessary in order to determine an appropriate response.
Listening is about knowing a place intimately, through its past (earlier peoples and cultures and geology), present, and what we hope for it in the future. As we listen, we become investigators, noting signs of health and disease, knowing what it takes for the land to thrive or what causes it to deteriorate. The health of the land affects everything in it, including us. When we’ve truly listened, we’ll know what’s needed and the role we can play in its future.
One example that is on a lot of people's minds these days is that of climate change. What, in the past, created the conditions we’re experiencing now and what we can do to turn things around? Mythologist Martin Shaw says that climate change is a sound that can be heard.
“Climate change isn’t a case to be made, it’s a sound to be heard. It’s really hearing something that brings the consequence with it — “I hear you.” We know that sensation, when it happens the whole world deepens. If we really heard what is happening around us it’s possible some of it may stop. From a mythic perspective, seeing is often a form of identifying, but hearing is the locating of a much more personal message. Hearing creates growing, uncomfortable discernment. Things get accountable.” ~ Martin Shaw, We are the Underworld on Medium
We must always remember that our actions contribute to the health or deterioration of the land. Learning to interpret the language of the land offers intimate glimpses of reality, ones that might possibly lead to greater empathy and effective action.
Conclusion
Start by noticing what you hear, right now where you are. Focus on subtle sounds, normally missed. It may seem that you hear nothing at first but give it time. Your ears are not used to registering subtle sounds. Notice when you can feel vibrations in your body created by sounds. Notice when you judge a sound as pleasant or unpleasant. What happens if you just let it pass, as it will? If you’re in a noisy environment, take pauses when you can and notice the space between sounds or look for a space of silence when you can take a break.
Become aware of your own sense of proprioception, how you move naturally, and how you express something to the world through gestures. Notice where you are situated in a space? What lies behind, beneath, and above you? Where do you see movement and gestures?
Where do you see health or deterioration? How can you nurture the land? What can you do to repair or restore? What do you imagine for the future?
How do you listen to the land? What is the land saying to you? Please let me know in the comments.
Another great article, Kim. Last year I attended a tennis tournament. We were sitting outside, on metal bleachers and it was hot and bright, so bright I closed my eyes when we first sat down. Tennis games are usually visual, but closing my eyes left me more open to everything: the sound of the ball, obviously, hitting racquets and the ground, but also the sound of feet on surface, and the players breathing and exclaiming. I could hear the crowd reacting, sounds from outside our court, a plane flying overhead. It was like a world opened. I heard nothing that I wouldn’t normally hear, but, with my eyes closed, I heard it differently. With deliberation I did the same thing later that afternoon, at a game inside a stadium, and heard similar sounds, but with a completely different ambience (different acoustics from the building, more people, players further away, but the experience of hearing the game rather than seeing it was fascinating. I’ve spent time listening carefully in different places in my neighbourhood; it’s difficult, because I’m downtown and mostly I hear construction and traffic, but there’s an ambience that’s different depending on where I am: the quiet of a cemetery, voices floating at a park, water over rocks at some rapids in a nearby river. The world talks to us, and it’s so, so, so easy to miss it.
I’m still thinking about gestures, and how the natural world responds to its own environment; your grape leaf analogy is brilliant. Food for thought.