Post by sasha on May 2, 2023 16:43:12 GMT -5
Meditations during a woodland tramp...
Silence - the absence of sound. Is there really any such thing? I doubt that even the most cleverly designed anechoic chamber can still the faint whine of blood rushing through the capillaries within our skulls. Very early on, Nature apparently recognized that detection of compression waves propagating through a medium could be of enormous benefit. Whether in water disturbed by an aquatic predator on the prowl, or airborne vibrations created by a tasty mouse scurrying for cover, such waves carry information useful - sometimes essential - to survival. The environment at the bottom of the ocean of air in which we dwell is never static, but constantly crisscrossed by density waves radiating outward from the tiniest of vibratory disturbances.
"The silence of deep woods" - utter nonsense. I've never known the woods to be silent. Quiet, perhaps - quiet as two old friends, long since talked out, sipping whisky while seated amiably before a crackling fire. I've hiked through woods still enough to hear a single leaf falling upon the brittle chaff of the forest floor. On a quiet, wooded hilltop I once heard a painted turtle, uncharacteristically far from water, tiptoeing across dead leaves. Moments later I heard another. I never did learn why they were so far upslope, though I speculated they were looking for places to lay their eggs.
Just yesterday, I paid a long overdue visit to a favorite trail along the wooded shore of the Millers River in north-central Massachusetts. I'd already passed the point at which I should have begun my return trip - but I was happily in the thrall of trail seduction, promising myself "just a little further, then I'll turn back". In the meantime, I paused for a rest. A light breeze stirred, keeping the black flies from my face while further disheveling my hair. A sense of peace, of love, and a One-ness with this place washed over me. I looked upwards to the treetops with a faint smile and listened...
... and what I heard was the music of pines singing in the wind - an omnipresent susshing, like that of a cataract tumbling down a narrow channel, but softer somehow, gentler, less extroverted. It's a sound most of us are probably familiar with. I know it to be the result of turbulence created when the moving air passes through the treetops, swirling through the uppermost branches, twigs, and needles. In white pines - the most common native variety hereabouts - those needles sprout five to a cluster. The splayed fingers of so uncountably many needle clusters swaying and quivering in the breeze send uncountably many reflections outward, musical notes pitched according to how quickly or leisurely each needle vibrates. We hear, not the individual notes, but their aggregate. White noise, it's called.
White noise - not an allusion to the species of tree in which it occurs, but an analogy with white light, light composed of all colors in combination, something Isaac Newton demonstrated with a simple glass prism. The pines sing an orchestral piece consisting of all possible notes in equal measure, perceived by us as a toneless hiss, mediated by complex fluid dynamics, from which emerges the music of the forest.
But awareness of the underlying physics doesn't diminish the magic. Red pines, favored by sylviculturists because they grow straight even in relatively poor soil, produce a distinctively different sound - a deeper, less sibilant whooshing, what audio engineers call pink noise - another comparison to light. Just as the wavelength of red light is longer than that of the other colors in our visible spectrum, the longer wavelengths of sound occupy the lower notes of the audio spectrum. These lower tones are over-represented in the spectrum of pink noise. The needles of red pines come only two to a cluster, disrupting air flow differently from the white pines' five, perhaps exciting fewer high-frequency vibrations. One can hear the difference between white pines and red just by the sound the wind makes in their canopies! And I find this miraculous, a tantalizing hint of some Deep structure, a glimpse into a Nature not designed for our exploitation, but into which we emerged no more or less important than all the other organisms that thrive here. We can't hear the navigational beacons of bats, nor see the ultraviolet runway markings painted for honeybees on some flowers - but our cortexes allow us at least to contemplate these remarkable abilities, and perhaps ascribe some spiritual significance to the unceasing wonders around us.
Silent? The music is everywhere. The rain on the skylight. The chatter of chickadees, the ethereal flutes of the wood thrush, the other-worldly calls of the barred owl. The rumble of distant thunder echoing off the hills, the noisy shouts of a stream tumbling down a rocky channel. Late summer nights alive with the elegy of the katydids. It's all there for the hearing.
I've recorded bird calls, especially during the spring when they're busily staking out territory. These calls played back at slow speed reveal a world to which we're ordinarily not privy. We don't hear the details because they're not talking to us. Our irrelevance is part of the Magick.
Physicist Richard Feynman was supposedly asked if the relentless pursuit of mathematical descriptions for natural processes might be some kind of intellectual subjugation meant to exalt ourselves at the expense of wonder at the world around us. He answered something to the effect: "I, too, can see the stars overhead in the desert night sky - but do I see less, or do I see more?"
He speaks for me.
Silence - the absence of sound. Is there really any such thing? I doubt that even the most cleverly designed anechoic chamber can still the faint whine of blood rushing through the capillaries within our skulls. Very early on, Nature apparently recognized that detection of compression waves propagating through a medium could be of enormous benefit. Whether in water disturbed by an aquatic predator on the prowl, or airborne vibrations created by a tasty mouse scurrying for cover, such waves carry information useful - sometimes essential - to survival. The environment at the bottom of the ocean of air in which we dwell is never static, but constantly crisscrossed by density waves radiating outward from the tiniest of vibratory disturbances.
"The silence of deep woods" - utter nonsense. I've never known the woods to be silent. Quiet, perhaps - quiet as two old friends, long since talked out, sipping whisky while seated amiably before a crackling fire. I've hiked through woods still enough to hear a single leaf falling upon the brittle chaff of the forest floor. On a quiet, wooded hilltop I once heard a painted turtle, uncharacteristically far from water, tiptoeing across dead leaves. Moments later I heard another. I never did learn why they were so far upslope, though I speculated they were looking for places to lay their eggs.
Just yesterday, I paid a long overdue visit to a favorite trail along the wooded shore of the Millers River in north-central Massachusetts. I'd already passed the point at which I should have begun my return trip - but I was happily in the thrall of trail seduction, promising myself "just a little further, then I'll turn back". In the meantime, I paused for a rest. A light breeze stirred, keeping the black flies from my face while further disheveling my hair. A sense of peace, of love, and a One-ness with this place washed over me. I looked upwards to the treetops with a faint smile and listened...
... and what I heard was the music of pines singing in the wind - an omnipresent susshing, like that of a cataract tumbling down a narrow channel, but softer somehow, gentler, less extroverted. It's a sound most of us are probably familiar with. I know it to be the result of turbulence created when the moving air passes through the treetops, swirling through the uppermost branches, twigs, and needles. In white pines - the most common native variety hereabouts - those needles sprout five to a cluster. The splayed fingers of so uncountably many needle clusters swaying and quivering in the breeze send uncountably many reflections outward, musical notes pitched according to how quickly or leisurely each needle vibrates. We hear, not the individual notes, but their aggregate. White noise, it's called.
White noise - not an allusion to the species of tree in which it occurs, but an analogy with white light, light composed of all colors in combination, something Isaac Newton demonstrated with a simple glass prism. The pines sing an orchestral piece consisting of all possible notes in equal measure, perceived by us as a toneless hiss, mediated by complex fluid dynamics, from which emerges the music of the forest.
But awareness of the underlying physics doesn't diminish the magic. Red pines, favored by sylviculturists because they grow straight even in relatively poor soil, produce a distinctively different sound - a deeper, less sibilant whooshing, what audio engineers call pink noise - another comparison to light. Just as the wavelength of red light is longer than that of the other colors in our visible spectrum, the longer wavelengths of sound occupy the lower notes of the audio spectrum. These lower tones are over-represented in the spectrum of pink noise. The needles of red pines come only two to a cluster, disrupting air flow differently from the white pines' five, perhaps exciting fewer high-frequency vibrations. One can hear the difference between white pines and red just by the sound the wind makes in their canopies! And I find this miraculous, a tantalizing hint of some Deep structure, a glimpse into a Nature not designed for our exploitation, but into which we emerged no more or less important than all the other organisms that thrive here. We can't hear the navigational beacons of bats, nor see the ultraviolet runway markings painted for honeybees on some flowers - but our cortexes allow us at least to contemplate these remarkable abilities, and perhaps ascribe some spiritual significance to the unceasing wonders around us.
Silent? The music is everywhere. The rain on the skylight. The chatter of chickadees, the ethereal flutes of the wood thrush, the other-worldly calls of the barred owl. The rumble of distant thunder echoing off the hills, the noisy shouts of a stream tumbling down a rocky channel. Late summer nights alive with the elegy of the katydids. It's all there for the hearing.
I've recorded bird calls, especially during the spring when they're busily staking out territory. These calls played back at slow speed reveal a world to which we're ordinarily not privy. We don't hear the details because they're not talking to us. Our irrelevance is part of the Magick.
Physicist Richard Feynman was supposedly asked if the relentless pursuit of mathematical descriptions for natural processes might be some kind of intellectual subjugation meant to exalt ourselves at the expense of wonder at the world around us. He answered something to the effect: "I, too, can see the stars overhead in the desert night sky - but do I see less, or do I see more?"
He speaks for me.