SOUND ACROSS WATER – Listening to the Past

I have this romantic notion in my head about the way sound carries over an expanse of water. The image that keeps coming to mind is that of a central Minnesota lake around the end of the 19th century. It could be any lake—perhaps one that's buoyant in your memory.

 

In my reverie I see families who've come by horse and wagon to spend the long summer afternoon swimming, boating and reveling in the crystal clear waters. Laughter shimmers across the water in small, agreeable waves, eventually washing up on every shore.

As evening draws in around the lake, lovers row aimlessly, never beyond sight of the dock—but lost anyway. By nightfall, most have gone home, but a few campfires wink from surrounding woods. You can practically hear a whisper across the lake.

SOUND AND SPACE
You’ve been here before, haven't you? In your childhood, or maybe just in your imagination? What is it about a scene like this that so captures our imagination?

Is it the purity, the utter care-free simplicity of a more innocent time (or at least a time I have the luxury of being able to render with poetic license)? I guess that goes without saying for us slow-it-down, soak-it-in romantics. But there's more to it than that, something about how the mood gets carried in those sounds.

I know there are scientific reasons for how sound waves carry across water—something about the water surface and the cooler air just above it combining to contain and channel them. But that doesn't interest me as much as the symbolic meaning.

            These sounds—if we let them—draw us in. 
            Whether we like what we hear or not, they 
            connect us, define us, define our community.

For me, sound is spatial. I think of the way the great, spreading American elm tree defines the space under and around its huge, fountain-shaped canopy. Like the shade of such a tree, sound involves everything it can reach. If you're a city dweller, it might be the muddled shouts and laughter stirring the thick summer evening air from the baseball diamond a block or two away.

If your neighborhood's a little rougher, it might be less pleasant things. Whatever the source, these sounds—if we let them—draw us in. Whether we like what we hear or not, they connect us, define us, define our community.

LONGING TO BELONG
Imagining once more that idyllic summer evening at the lake, that sense of community is somehow intensified. With no competing noise, the clarity and reach of that laughter, those campfire conversations and lovers' whispers, seems funneled to our ears. They wrap around us. And the symbolism of their having to reach across such a chilling, empty space makes the connection feel all the more intimate.

Maybe that's part of it for me—a longing for community. Don't you feel, sometimes, that we're losing that sense of sharing a beloved place or space, of belonging to one another? That everyone's just in it for themselves?

Perhaps, but—to borrow a visual metaphor—why curse the darkness when we could light a candle? Listening for the vital signs of community doesn't mean we have to live other people's lives nor fix all the world's problems. All we have to do is pay attention, listen with our hopes and our hearts, and care what we hear.

A "CURIOUS" DILEMMA

I've lived most of my life in a curious dilemma. On one hand, I believe in taking life as it comes, accepting people and things at face value, avoiding assumptions and judgment, sparing my experiences the burden of expectation. This has never been easy for me, but, like any valuable lesson, I figure it's worth the effort. In fact, I'm convinced it's one of the prerequisites of happiness.

On the other hand, I am, if nothing else, a curious, analytical person. I notice the subtlest of details—things I pick up on with my conventional senses as well as some I intuit. And when I notice, I automatically want to know more. What's making that sound? Where's this creature going? Why did she say it that way? Even though such delving questions might seem at odds with face-value acceptance, I've learned to give them a nurturing place in my soul, because my quest to answer them nearly always leads to fascination and wonder. These, too, are essential to my happiness.

     It is not by my request, but by her invitation
     that I enter and explore her mystery and miracle.

So how does one reconcile these apparently disparate urges? Can one really appreciate first impressions, yet still crave deeper knowledge? I guess I've always felt the two lived in tandem, merely tolerating each other in a sort of separate-but-equal co-existence. In the past eight or nine years, though, as I've written more and more about such things, I've begun to see them as not so separate after all, but more like two sides of the same coin.

Serenity is the climate it takes for curiosity to flourish. I've gotten really good at turning off the dissonance of a busy day, dismissing others' demands and my own, and opening my heart, my spirit, to the gift of wonder. It's then that an incredible transaction occurs. True to the first of my urges, I invest my attention, surrendering myself to simply what is. Then the curiosity part comes in: What more might there be? That part I see not originating in me, but driven by Nature. It is not by my request, but by her invitation that I enter and explore her mystery and miracle.

So there's no dilemma after all. After decades of self-questioning (and a few counseling sessions here and there), the contentious marriage of a serene soul with an intensely curious spirit seems, at last, to have reconciled. The serenity is my contribution; the curiosity and wonder are Nature's. Nowadays, when I put myself in the right place—both in physical location and in my mind—Nature invariably shows me the way to the right place in my (and her) spirit.

WHEN AUTUMN LEAVES...

When autumn leaves... You know the rest of the lyric, from that great old standard about the melancholy of this season. I feel it in my bones, as the sights, sounds and smells of another summer curl up to hibernate in the cozy corners of memory; as green, blue, violet and rose dial down to sleep mode; and as daylight—especially those glorious after-dinner hours—is borrowed for the enjoyment of those on the other side of Earth.

Yeah, I feel the melancholy, but I don't let it get me down. I figure I can either curse the darkness or turn on my light. For me, as those of you who know me can attest, that's a no-brainer.

What could be more emblematic of this season than falling leaves? What a perfect metaphor for the swirling, sinking emotions of autumn! Like summer's profusion of life, they shrivel and fall and die. Yet they do so with such exuberance, such flamboyance, that we can't help but be moved by their promise of renewal.

I often wonder what someone from a place where trees don't turn would think of seeing, for the first time, a stand of sugar maples in their full fall glory. Don't you think it would be every bit as exotic as when we northerners witness the lavish colors and forms of a Caribbean coral reef for the first time? (Probably even more so, since reefs are finding it harder and harder to renew themselves.)

We of the northern deciduous forests are used to thinking of autumn leaves as a sort of commodity—a mass of stuff more than a community of individuals. We o-ooh and ah-h-h at the broad brush of color they apply to the landscape. We rake them into piles, like so much soil or snow, to be disposed of, or, one would hope, composted. If we're smart, we play in them.

They shrivel and fall and die, yet with such exuberance, such flamboyance, that we can't help but be moved by their promise of renewal.

But take a moment to pick up a single, brightly colored leaf and look at it. Notice how different the two sides are. One, obviously its face, is smoother, brighter, often even glossy. The other side, like the ceiling in an old home's basement, is where the plumbing is. See how the veins stick up on this side, how muted the color is? Nature, with her usual economy of design, knows perfectly well that both beauty and function have their places.

Hold the leaf up to the sun. Notice how the color catches fire. Is it the same color you observed in just reflected light? (Some leaves might surprise you—like grape leaves just before they turn, which may be a dusty gray green on their back side, but engorge with a rich, deep maroon when back-lit.)

Once in a great while you'll find the skeleton of a leaf. You'd expect them to have crinkled and broken, lost their shapes and gotten ground up by machines or feet or microbes. But occasionally you can find one—as worthy a prize as a four-leaf clover or a sand dollar—that's lost all its skin, but none of its "bones." You appreciate, then, a leaf's amazing structure. Like ever-finer lace, its arteries, veins and capillaries reveal how they've given the whole organ not only its sustenance, but its structure.

There's so much to be discovered about autumn. So, if you feel your heart growing heavy at the prospects of another long, cold, dark winter, now you know what to do. Move to Mexico? No, just turn over a new leaf.

OF SCHISMS AND SCRIMS – Seeing Through Our Own Reality

Sometimes the membrane separating one reality from another is very thin. I used to discount all those “paranormal” events people claim to experience—feeling presences, hearing voices, sensing others' thoughts.

Those were other people's realities, if they were even real at all. That was until one perfect June day a few years ago.

I’d taken a break from a long bike ride, and when I woke up from a delicious, breezy cat nap in the dappled shade of a small tree, I felt my deceased dad’s spirit. His closeness moved me to tears. Of course, I couldn’t actually see him, but at that moment the sunlight, the leaves and the breeze all insisted he was there.

     As the light of our awareness and faith rises 
     behind the sheer material, we see a different 
     scene altogether.

Are such experiences just illusions of our own making? I don’t think so, but I do believe they require our openness, our readiness to see them. Perhaps, having just awakened, I was in that astute place one inhabits briefly before the ordinary concerns of life ooze back in like mud.

What separates us from other realities? It might be space, time, experience or any number of other factors. Or might these schisms of understanding be due simply to our own inattentiveness? If we pay attention, can we begin to see “through” the membrane and at least start to recognize differing realities?

Like the image on a theatrical scrim, what we first perceive seems to be all there is. But then, as the light of our awareness and faith rises behind the sheer material, we see a different scene altogether. And that deeper illumination takes us to deeper truth.
          If we want to see the world around us 
          as beautiful...we must be so ourselves.

I’m driving to work and someone cuts me off. I get angry. I see the other driver as mean, greedy, thoughtless and stupid. In other words, I invent a reality to justify my anger. The parallel reality— which I can only imagine, but which is nonetheless every bit as valid as my invented one— may be that the other driver is a single mom who's just found out that her toddler has been seriously hurt at day care. She’s on her way to the hospital. With that understanding, it's not so hard to believe that I'm actually in her way.

This is just one example of how learning to recognize parallel realities can empower us. There are countless others, in our relationships, in our appreciation of Nature, in our faith journeys. How we view Creation is a reflection of what’s within us.

The lesson is that, if we want to see the world around us as beautiful, or to see our fellow human beings as good and innocent, we must be so ourselves. It doesn’t take a great stretch to reach the powerful conclusion that by changing ourselves we can, indeed, change our reality.

"You've got to believe it to see it."
  DEWITT JONES, National Geographic photographer turned motivational speaker

FOR EVERY ANSWER, A QUESTION

Don’t get me wrong; I envy most of the people I know for their clarity of thought. I wish I could make decisions right away, without first having to let facts and feelings percolate for a while. I wish I could be sure enough about an issue to be willing to go to bat it.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve thought of this reticence as a handicap. But, in the past decade or so, at last, I’ve found a way to free myself of that burden; I’ve decided it’s actually a strength.

      I guess you could say asking questions
      is more important to me than being right.

After all, I’m thinking, isn’t the world a more interesting place when the conversation doesn’t necessarily end at one person’s version of the truth? Isn’t it better when, for every ideologue, there’s a skeptic; for every answer, a question; for every teacher, a student?

I guess I can’t stop being the student. And I think that’s okay.

Learning’s a funny thing. For some people, it’s clearly the means to an end. You learn so you can know; you know so you don’t have to listen to anyone any more.

Not me. The more I learn, the more certain I am that I don’t know everything. I guess you could say asking questions is more important to me than being right.

Giving myself permission to be ambivalent has been liberating. Ironically, it seems to have actually emboldened my thinking in a way. Not that I make decisions any more easily; but I’m coming more and more to not just tolerate, but actually believe in my view that, in life, absolutely nothing—including this statement—is absolute. It all depends on how you look at it.

WHAT WHALE? Observing the Invisible

Nano-scientists are studying and even making things out of sub-atomic particles too small to see, even with a microscope. A little closer to home, I can tell there’s a big carp darting away from the bow of my canoe or a hungry smallmouth hunting for supper even when the water’s too murky to see them.

How? The same way those scientists keep track of those quarks and fermions; the same way you know about the wind even though it’s invisible and you’re inside your house where you can’t even feel it.

 Often the best—sometimes the only—way of seeing something is by the effects it has on something else. In the case of the wind, I get my clues from the trees, a flag or a leaf tumbling across the yard. With the carp, the giveaway is the subtle bulging of the surface where the water’s displaced by the fish’s movement. And you know bass are hunting when you see schools of shiner minnows breaking the water’s surface in flight.

This method of “indirect observation” has worked well for me in locating sloths in Costa Rican forests and tracking whales in the Sea of Cortez. Again, the animal may be all but invisible, so the trick is not to look for it directly. You look for the other things that give it away.

     With this expectation, it’s like the 
     mother of all Where’s Waldo pictures.

For sloths, it's the distinctive cecropia trees whose leaves and resting places they seem to prefer. And I try to find subtle breaks in the pattern of dark, narrow branches and the light spaces between them.

For the whale, the giveaway might be its “fluke prints,” the surprising, wave- canceling circles caused by the upflow of water from the creature’s up-and-down tail movements.

Indirect observation involves a subtle shift in one’s mindset. If you’re looking for a sloth, you’ve set your unconscious visual filter to rule out anything that doesn’t have brown, shaggy fur and four legs. With this expectation, it’s like the mother of all Where’s Waldo pictures; let’s say it’ll take you a while.

But if you switch the filter to a coarser mesh, that is one set to look for more generalized information, like breaks in patterns, you improve your odds considerably. If you’re bird watching, this means adjusting your eye-brain filter to focus not so much on spotting the birds themselves, but on noticing movement. It’s a pretty fine distinction, but it works.

"I believe only in what I do not see." Gustave Moreau (French, 1826-1898)

SO THIS ANT WALKS INTO A BAR...

We shouldn’t have been surprised to find ants in the house. After all, I figure just about everyone in the world has them…if not things much worse. But I just don’t like the idea of insects crawling around who knows where inside the house.
These were reddish-brown ants, smaller than the dreaded carpenter species, but considerably bigger than the tiny “piss ants” so common here in Minnesota, often attracted by spilled sweets. At first there were only a few, but eventually they seemed to be finding their way all over the kitchen. 

I must admit that, against my better judgment, I’d tried various poisons. But neither those targeting sweet-eating nor fat-craving ants had worked. So now it was time to take a closer look. I decided to start thinking like an ant.
Why were they coming in through the kitchen window frame right in front of the sink? How were they getting in? (Okay, how do you stop an ant from getting into a house with a thousand holes big enough to drive an ant truck through?) And what were they looking for (or, God forbid, what had they already found)? 
    I’ve always thought of discovery as a
    worthwhile endeavor in its own right.

So I watched the ants carefully for several days. I found no well-traveled path to any one pantry shelf. For the most part, they seemed to be just randomly scouting around. In fact, I seldom found two or more of them together…except around the sink and drain.
Aha! There’s some greasy residue in the sink, I thought. But even after a thorough cleaning, the ants still gathered there.
Then it dawned on me: water. It’s late June. It’s kind of dry outside. Could they just be thirsty, waiting for the next time I turned on the tap? I filled a few bottle caps with water and put them along the windowsill between storm and sash, and went to bed.
The next morning, I couldn’t find a single ant anywhere in the kitchen, except along the sill. And there, sure enough, were several of them, teetering on the scalloped metal edges of the bottle caps, happily drinking from their new watering holes!

After that day—in fact, for the rest of the summer—those ants have never ventured past the kitchen windowsill, as long as we gave them what they wanted. That was a deal we could live with. ________________________________________________________________ 

I’ve always thought of discovery as a worthwhile endeavor in its own right. But my experience with those thirsty ants reminds me, once again, of its practical applications as well. So if you’re inclined to think of uncovering Nature’s marvels as merely a fluffy diversion for those with too much free time, here’s your chance to rationalize your transformation.
Keep your eyes and ears open and you’ll save time and money, minimize your footprint on the environment and simplify your life. Now is that something you can afford not to do?