MUSIC OF THE RIVER

After retiring two years ago, I have been able to enjoy many new and some long-awaited pursuits.  I love photography, hiking, exploring, traveling and of course, writing.  But one of my biggest joys is floating on local rivers in my kayak.  A friend introduced me to kayaking and we shared some remarkable time on a clear quiet lake.  It was like cocaine to my spirit.  It awakened something inside me that is hard to explain.  Floating on the water, quietly paddling along, listening to the harmony of nature has renewed my life and rejuvenated my well being.  It struck a chord in my heart reminding me of how music, any kind, can bring quality to my life.

Since that time, another friend has offered numerous opportunities to go paddling.  I get a high on every trip and feel compelled to write about it here.  I sincerely hope that by explaining how the music of the river has affected me, you too, will be inspired to pursue a part of our natural world that fulfills your wandering soul.

The music I hear on the river can be legato (smooth) or it can be forte (played loudly.)  The water is sometimes cool and serene, and other times it is hot and raucous. Floating along allowing the current to drift you over a multicolored pebbled bottom can relax you into a nature induced coma.  I always hear a medley of bird calls, frogs, and all things that buzz along the river.  I am amazed by the soft timbre of a whooshing heron’s wings. I love to greet a curious dragonfly that hovers with wings beating to its own musical rhythm. The light “plop” of a turtle into the water off a nearby log relaxes the tempo of my blood pressure.

Some rivers have fast waters with numerous obstacles waiting to claim your kayak. Paddling over boulders and through narrow rushes of water wakes up the human motivation to feel alive.  I am A Capella, alone in my quest to conquer the river.  In these places, in between quick decisions, the composition can be heard in the bubbling and gurgling waters.  Because I am a novice kayaker, there are times I can hear some riffles well before reaching them, and the anticipation feels like a loud drum with tympanums is inside my chest.   

The music of the river, with nature as the conductor, is a song cycle with a single theme – inspiration.   Whether you can get into a canoe or kayak on the river, or just spend some time near a lake or river, you are sure to hear music in the water if you listen.  Mother Nature provides encore after encore through each season, revitalizing our spirits with her songs. I wish you the peace of music in nature wherever your wanderlust takes you.

WILDERNESS AND SOLITUDE

  

Wilderness is the raw material out of which man has hammered the artifact called civilization. –Aldo Leopold

I spent some time in a workshop this week, the Leopold Education Project.  As a naturalist, it would be difficult not to love Leopold, and I have since the first time I read A Sand County Almanac.  But I came away with a different understanding in this workshop.  In being reminded of my love for wilderness, which I relate to solitude, I saw a side of Leopold I had not considered before.  His efforts to encompass all of nature into one community, and treat all natural things with the same respect, are reminders of how and why we seek wilderness and solitude.

When Leopold speaks of wilderness, he agrees it is an “adversary to be conquered.” Pioneers traveled dangerously across our adversary continent seeking favorable grounds to set up a home.  Outdoor enthusiasts seek to conquer wilderness by traveling through it and living to tell about it.  Mankind today seeks to conquer outer space as our next frontier.  We have conquered our wilderness areas, trampling on the raw materials we found in order to set up cities and communities. We have traversed the land single handedly using up all resources, and lived to tell about it.  And we have populated the wilderness of space with our satellites and space ships. But in Leopold’s words, “that same raw stuff is something to be loved and cherished, because it gives definition and meaning to life.”

That is what I found in this recent study of Leopold; definition and meaning to life. I always agreed that ethical use of land could only come from love and admiration for land.  In this study, I heard Leopold’s definition of land ethics as it relates to philosophical values, and I discovered that this is why I seek wilderness and solitude.  It had not occurred to me before to define why I loved to seek out and protect wild places, but I think this yearning is in all of us.  There is a certain peace found in the study of nature and therefore the study of our origins as Leopold puts it.

“We can be ethical only in relation to something we can see, feel, understand, love, or otherwise have faith in.”  Aldo Leopold

Reading again some of Leopold’s wonderful descriptions of wilderness moments he experienced, reminded me of my own moments of wildness. Here is one of my favorite quotes of his:  “A dawn wind stirs on the great marsh.  With almost imperceptible slowness it rolls a bank of fog across the wide morass.  Like the white ghost of a glacier the mists advance, riding over phalanxes of tamarack, sliding across bog-meadows heavy with dew.  A single silence hangs from horizon to horizon.”   His writing is inspirational to me because I have experienced sitting in a place just like this, feeling, tasting, and breathing in the mists, and being thankful for the silence of the moment. 

But my recent revelation is in the why.  Why have I sought out wild places and solitude?  I discovered that it is, and has always been for me, giving meaning to my life.  When I sit quietly alone among the tall grass of a prairie and use my senses to listen, smell and see the sights all around me, I live.  When I walk a forest trail, absorbing the freedom to wander at my own pace, I live.  When I sit on a beach and ponder where the waves go when they hit the shore, I live.

Wilderness and solitude are to me a way to live life to its fullest.  Only by living among the wild-ness of nature can I survive living in the modern world.  Everything I learn from studying natural communities, gives me methods to deal with human influences on my world.  Most importantly, taking time to find wilderness and solitude renews my spirit, increases my faith, and energizes my psyche.

I come away from my nature encounters full and satisfied.  I have a deeper understanding of why I should play a role in preserving each piece of the natural communities God has given us.  Leopold says finding the cultural value of wilderness boils down to a question of intellectual humility, “It is only the scholar who understands why the raw wilderness gives definition and meaning to the human enterprise.”

I know I will never be called a scholar.  But I also know that, regardless, I will continue to seek out wilderness and solitude as a way to keep increasing my love of nature.  From this love of nature will come enough knowledge to at least be counted among the naturalists of this world.