5.4 Perspectives on Listening to Nature

The three previous ways to expand our capacities for listening to nature (expanding the senses, flow learning, and forest bathing) can be better understood from three different listening perspectives. Each listening perspective represents a deeper level of listening to nature. These listening perspectives are partly informed by Sean Blenkinsop and Laura Piersol’s ^[1]naturalistic observations of children in nature. Based on this article, the previous literature review, my personal experience, and my reading of student journals of nature experiences for the past decade, I posit at least three distinct perspectives for listening to nature. I label these listening perspectives observation and emotion, active symbolic imagining and meaning-making, and mystical-spiritual. Next, each of these listening perspectives is described.

Imagine spontaneously smiling at the sight of a purple iris in bloom on a sunny spring day. Now imagine seeing the wagging tail of the family dog (or neighbor’s dog) after a long day at work and feeling happy as you pet the dog. These direct encounters with nature illustrate the connection between observation and emotion. We observe something in nature using the five senses and feel emotion(s). These direct sensorial encounters with nature are listening to nature. Observation is an act of listening. Focusing attention on a particular object in nature, perceiving and interpreting (e.g., naming the object), and emotionally responding are also part of the listening process. This perspective of listening is probably the most common experience of listening to nature. It is also the fundamental building block for the next two perspectives on listening to nature. I call this first perspective of listening to nature the “observational-emotional” perspective.

Another example of listening to nature is taken from my recollection of last winter. I see the potted lemon grass plant in the corner of the living room. The leaves are pale. I feel sad. I surmise that the plant needs more water and light. Moving the plant closer to a sunny window, I pour a glass of water into the pot and reflect. During this winter season, I have also neglected things like my Tai Chi^[2] regime. It too has paled like the lemon grass leaves. I decide to rejuvenate myself by undertaking a short Tai Chi session in the morning sunshine and follow it with a tall glass of cool filtered water.

Notice how this listening scenario builds on the previous observational-emotional perspective. After seeing the pale plant and feeling sad, the reflective process of listening uses the plant as a symbol to generate personal meaning. This meaning-making process involves empathy for the plant and noticing its need for light and water. There is also compassion for the plant, empathy translated into the action of providing sunshine and water for the life and growth of the plant. With further reflective listening, the symbolic meanings fold back on the self in considering how to apply what I’ve learned, resulting in undertaking a Tai Chi session and hydrating. I call this second perspective of listening to nature the “symbolic imagining-meaning making” perspective since it adds symbolic meaning-making to the previous observational-emotional listening perspective.

Prolonged and repeated observations, intellectual reflections, and meaning-making with a particular object in nature can create a sense of connectedness with the natural object. In time, a feeling of a relationship or kinship may develop. In the third perspective of listening to nature, the listening deepens beyond observation, emotions, symbolizing, and meaning-making. In this deeper perspective of listening, some individuals sense “communications”^[3] from the natural object on a nonverbal level. Sometimes, this communication takes the form of natural language, but more often, the communication is sensed as emotional impressions, energetic feelings, and intuitions.

There are many possible interpretations of communications from listening to nature from this third perspective. First, this listening to nature may be a simple human projection. The tendency to project human characteristics, motives, and attributes onto non-human objects, like nature, is called anthropomorphism. Second, this deeper listening can be understood as sensing energy from the electromagnetic fields of the natural object. All living things in nature produce measurable electromagnetic fields, and experiments show that these fields are detectable by humans.^[4] Third, mystical or spiritual apprehensions may be involved in this kind of listening that are beyond the realm of current science to measure reliably.^[5] I call this third perspective on listening to nature the “mystical-spiritual.”^[6]

The three perspectives of listening to nature can be active in any human-nature encounter. These perspectives are generally progressive but need not always be so. For instance, the mystical-spiritual experience of viewing the Grand Canyon can occur spontaneously without the second perspective’s symbolic imagining and meaning-making reflective process. One can view the Grand Canyon and feel elated (first perspective of observational-emotional), and from there, continue hiking without progressing to the second (symbolic imagining-meaning-making) and third (mystical-spiritual) listening perspectives.

Within the three interrelated perspectives of listening to nature, there are three frequent objects in nature that humans listen to. These three nature objects are plants, animals, and the elements. In the remainder of this chapter, I explore how humans listen to each of these parts of the natural world. I also invite the reader to consider activities for how to listen more deeply to each of these aspects of nature.