Aside from Craig Date, who likes to sing an occasional rousing rendition of "Love is a Many Splendored Thing," most of my friends consider it a worthwhile tradition to stay quiet on the water. We've learned that when we paddle or boat without talking we see more wildlife, become more aware of our surroundings, and are more likely to still the senseless inner chatter that fills our heads most of the time.
It's an interesting commentary on human nature that when we say we want peace and quiet we do not ordinarily mean peace and silence. We don't want the absence of sound, we want the absence of noise. When we seek relief from television blare and traffic roar we turn to quiet music, the rustle of wind in trees, bird song, and, most soothing of all, water. Nothing puts us at ease as quickly as rain on a roof, the rumble of ocean surf, and the whispering of a river. Surround yourself with such sounds and it doesn't take long to start hearing the music out there.
One afternoon not long ago, during a leisurely paddle down a river near my home, I shut my eyes for relief from the double brilliance of the sun and the sun's reflection on the water, and became aware of a complex background of sounds I had until then somehow missed.
The canoe slipped through the water with a sound like silk being torn, accompanied by a great deal of quiet hissing, humming, and chuckling. I listened deeper and heard from the river itself a symphony of slurs and murmurs, distant throbbing, and muted gurgles, gulps, and grumbles. I dipped my paddle into the water and it started a separate melody line, a rhythmic sip and swallow, followed by the shushing draw of the blade against the current and the drip of the lift, then the sip and swallow again.
I don't believe that every encounter with nature automatically transports us back to some mystical sense of well-being that has been stolen away by modern life. No doubt people have been inattentive and distracted as long as we've had brains enough to string thoughts together. But I know that we are equipped to see and hear more than we ordinarily do, and that sometimes, when conditions are right, we can open ourselves to a world so rich with sensations that it makes the booming progress of civilization dim to insignificance.
Drifting downstream that afternoon I realized that there is a big difference between hearing and listening. Hearing is passive and unintentional; it is what we do when we are near airports and freeways or when we are jostled in a crowded department store with loudspeakers shouting around us.
Listening is active. It takes effort and practice to listen to the laughter of children, the songs of birds, the shifting leaves in a wind-stirred aspen, and the thousand subtle voices of a river. Somehow listening to such sounds throws a calm over our hectic lives. I swear it's music to our ears.
Copyright (c) 1996 Jerry Dennis. All rights reserved.