Prologue

Michael 5:00 am

I woke at 5:00 a.m. to prepare for a shared sit spot with John.  We planned to meet up at 6:30 and walk to the location we had scouted out a month before. 

I began my early morning routine by stoking the wood stove, dressing, feeding Jean-Luc (my cat), making coffee, and snacking on a little yogurt with granola.  I gathered what I needed per John’s suggestions; notebook, pencils (a pen might freeze, John told me), binoculars, camera, and a folding camp stool.

John 5:45 am

As I drove north in the persisting darkness of a winter morning I saw slender threads of wind-blown snow reaching across the highway.  Further north the wind wove the snow-threads into a white blanket that now covered the road. Plowed and accumulated snow crowded in from the shoulders.  But the view of the ever narrowing highway didn’t feel threatening or dangerous; it induced more of a sense of coziness.

Inserting the CD of my favorite on-the-way-to-a-sit spot music, the piano version of Pictures of an Exhibition by Modest Mussorgsky I remembered that I had always found parallels between his musically described viewing of an art exhibition and the sit spot experience of sitting still and observing nature.

Now, as I listened to the rapid mood shifts of the music, from melancholy to triumph, from sorrow to exuberance, from reflection to action, I thought the progression was an accurate portrayal of what it means to be human and experience the constant flow of sensory input through cognitive and emotional filters which in turn created an ever-changing tapestry of thoughts, an ever shifting kaleidoscope of emotions.

The dashboard clock read 6:15.  I was on time to meet my friend Michael for a shared sit spot that I had proposed.   He was a good candidate I thought; an introvert by nature, happy to sit by his wood stove with a pile of books at hand and a view out his wide windows at an ever changing nature panorama of yard with multiple bluebird houses mount on poles, an open sky, and a thickly forested hilltop.  He would have no difficulty sitting still and alone for an hour.

He was also a photographer, his specialty black and white street photos, and thus had developed a knack for seeing beauty, poignancy and universality in everyday life.  I’m always hesitant to think in stereotypes but Michael was from Oklahoma and had an aura of cowboy stoicism; quiet, no wasted words, indifferent to pain and discomfort, poised for action, and beneath it good hearted.  As a bonus he had a master’s degree in comparative literature so whatever he wrote would be well written and succinct, a good balance to my perennial wordiness.

Approach

Michael:

At a quarter after six, I drove to our prearranged meet up spot, where John immediately pulled in next to me.  Our timing was perfect.  We each quietly gathered our gear and started walking up Bucks Falls Road to our prearranged spot, which overlooked a hayfield, a beaver pond, and a forested hill to our south.  Still dark when we began walking, John heard a great horned owl hooting in the distance.  I suspected bird calls would be rare on an early January morning.  I took this as a good omen for what we might see and hear during the hour ahead. 

John:

After one miss in the dark I found the road, turned, drove up, and found the parking spot where Michael was waiting in his truck.  We got out, exchanged quiet greetings, loaded up our gear and walked up the road. There was just enough pre-dawn light to find our way.  I could hear my boots crunching on the fresh snow and could hear the rushing flow of water over nearby Bucks Falls. 

Our destination was a half mile up the road, over an old bridge spanning a creek, across a hayfield, through a patch of weeds and brush to a gently sloping hillside that overlooked a beaver pond.   A month ago we had scouted the location, one Michael had found, and it had immediately it felt right to me. It was edge habitat with a blend of open terrain, moving water, bushes, grasses, and an adjacent deep forest, a location that checked all the boxes for a good sit spot.

I hoped there would be something good going on this cold January morning.  Since I had invited Michael on this adventure I wanted him to have a good experience.

We turned off the road, trudged across the snowy hayfield, and worked our way through the brush to the hillside.  I left Michael at the base of a maple tree, walked another 100 yards, set up my stool under a pair of trees, sat down, settled in, pulled out my notebook, and began to take notes on all that I saw and heard.

Call and Response                                                     Interval 1        7:02 am

John:

Dark Sky, my trusty weather app registered the temperature at 30 degrees, the wind out of the west at 8 mph with gusts up to 15. Sunrise would occur at 7:24. The air felt mild enough to go without gloves

Still too dark to see much so I listened carefully.  To my left, I heard the steady shhhhhhh of water flowing down the little creek we had crossed.  Behind me I picked up on the soft, rising and falling whoooosh of the wind through the trees.

Then, from the woods came a mournful whoo-whoo, whoo-whoo-whoo, the call of a great horned owl.  I listened intently. Silence, another call, a few seconds later another. There were two calls, one higher, the female; the other to the right and deeper, the male—forest woodwinds, the female a clarinet, the male a bassoon.

These were territorial calls, the owls defining a breeding territory, warning others away. It was January, the beginning of the breeding season.  They would be putting finishing touches on their nest.  Soon the female would lay 2-4 eggs, the chicks hatching in February to be full grown and independent by next fall.

I listened to the interplay of the calls trying to detect some regular rhythm or pattern, my Western-trained mind searching for an ordered sequence.  The female took the lead, the male responded.  I counted the interval between their calls; four seconds, six, eight, two, and then their calls overlapped.   If there was a pattern it was known only to the owls.

While their calls were sonorous, the imagine of these tufted, soft brown and gray plumaged owls winsome, and their activity a welcome first hint of spring, I reminded myself that this was serious business for these owls that defended their territory ferociously.  These were big birds weighing up to three pounds with a wing span over 40 inches.  They were  tough, high level predators; perching, scanning, swooping silently,  seizing prey, rabbits preferred, but willing to feast on  mammals as big as woodchucks and skunks and birds as big as crows, mallards, or herons.

Michael:

At seven, John left me to set up on a small knoll next to a maple tree while he continued south about a hundred yards closer to the forest.

Although it was only 30 degrees with a slight wind, I had to wonder if I had appropriately dressed for an hour of physical inactivity— moot now, I thought.  I pulled out my notebook, checked the time.  It was 7:02 a.m., time to finish whatever futzing I needed to do in preparation for an hour of silent observation of my surroundings. 

Almost immediately, to my right, came the distant, plaintive call of the great horned owl we had heard on our walk up to our respective spots.  Now I heard two distinct vocalizations coming from the forest nearest John.  Mating calls, territorial demands, or both?  I realized my knowledge of owls was limited, but at the moment, I felt lucky and just wanted to appreciate the subtle, sotto voce that was not meant for my ears. 

My mind went to the old phrase I heard in grade school about when a tree falls in a lonely forest, and no animal is near to listen to it, did it make a sound?  I thought it is our natural instinct to prioritize our own emotions and observations.  We are by nature solipsistic, I thought. Perhaps a broader view is that we all have an internal and external life. 

Sitting quietly, with a pair of owls calling in the distance, and watching an early morning winter sunrise, I suddenly felt an acute awareness of the division and sometimes the distance between my inner and outer life.  I’ve heard others refer to that mental division we live in as the matrix, the hologram, or even a simulation.  I think of it as less a division than as a search for a signal in the noise.  After all, isn’t the mind just individualized culture? 

We live in the constant noise of what we watch, read, and hear.  It shapes who we are, our every shifting emotional responses, our mental life.  Yet, the problem is finding a direction or a signal within all that static.   Sitting in this spot for an hour, thinking less about the constant noise in my head and more about the immediate observable world, was a blessing I too rarely experience. 

Yeah, what a mystery life is.  The owls are preparing to mate.  The darkness of this late winter night gives way to daylight.  The world is changing, and I am changing too.  I’m growing older, remarkable and not remarkable at all, like winter itself.  Resignation?  I hope not.  I still want to take it all in before I reach my physical destination.  I’ve concluded that I am nothing special, nor is anybody else, for that matter.  Yet, of course, we all carry a singular weight and are very special.  I matter.  John matters.  The owls, I hear matter—this physical place matters.  Okay, time to turn off this mental BS (the noise) and just tune in for the next hour to the signals in front of me. 

Rose D’or                                                                   Interval 2        7:12 am

John:

Sitting on the lee side of the hill, I was sheltered from the wind.  A golden rod stem protruding from the snow became my wind meter.  It would begin to gently sway long before I felt the breeze on my face, the slender stem a more sensitive indictor than my skin.  There was room for my sense of touch to become more finely tuned. 

The owl duet faded away. In the subsequent silence, I heard a subtle buzzing in my ears, most likely lingering sound impressions from the drive up, the thrumming of the engine, the whining of tires on asphalt.  It would take time to sensitize my hearing to the sounds of nature.

To the east, past the sloping snow covered fields, past a hill top farm house, beyond a line of dark forested hills, I spotted two faint swatches of purple-pink floating on a canvas of dark gray clouds.  Ah, I thought with a smile, even on this gray, cloudy winter morning the sunrise won’t disappoint.   I had learned during my year of weekly sit spots that every sunrise painted a color show, sometimes spectacular, sometimes subtle.

Michael:

As I brought my awareness back to my surroundings, I noticed a featureless gray deck of middle and high clouds underscored by a narrow strip of light just above the eastern horizon.  It was here that the predawn light began to shift from dark gray to shades of azure and rose D’or.  I realized we were both in for a bit of nature’s light show.  To the north, the sky was breaking into altocumulus and stratocumulus clouds racing across a cerulean blue background.

The Sun Softly Rises                                                 Interval 3        7:22 am

Michael:

The owls had stopped their back-and-forth performance.  Above I heard the sound of a jet flying east towards one of the big airports nearer the coast—an audible human intrusion.  Grrr! (I would count five more before the hour was up.)   To my south, near the trees behind me, I could hear crows cawing.  Tune in, I thought, listen.  Nearby to my left, I could hear but not see a flock of foraging chickadees squeaking and chirping back and forth, working together on a cold winter morning.  The sound of the wind was barely perceptible but there.  The sound of the water flowing in the creek beyond the beaver pond, like the wind, was subtle and difficult to hear without tuning in.

John:

A jetliner flew high overhead, a high distant roaring whine. From the woods behind me two crows cawed back and forth, one with a rough hoarse call, the other with a higher clearer tone.

Looking down upon the snow coated surface of the frozen pond, my gaze settled on the beaver lodge, a rounded pile of dark sticks, a few with sharp points protruding from the ice.  I suddenly wondered what beaver life was like during the winter.  In their dark lodge, in the dark cold water beneath the dark veiling layer of snow covered ice did they perceive the onset of daylight?  Did they gather at daybreak for a crunchy breakfast of bark plucked from their larder of twigs?

Then my mind began to engage in the worst possible kind of nature thinking, rank anthropomorphism.  I pictured a human like scene with the parents telling the little beaver kits to sit up straight, munch quietly, and make sure they gnawed off every last bit of bark.  When the kits complained about eating the same old sticks again, I could hear the parents say, in beaver talk of course, “When we were kits we were happy to be served winter sticks and we never complained.”

I laughed but also winced at the absurdity of my thoughts. Then I realized by sitting still, by letting looking turn to gazing, by allowing thinking to turn to musing that I had raised a previously unconsidered question.  What exactly did beavers do in the winter?  Once again forest stillness raised as many questions as answers.  I had a topic for further research when I got home.

Emerging from my reverie, I glanced up at the sky where more swatches of color had appeared; more intense purple-pink and new colors, soft yellow and luminous orange. The morning sun was being generous with its color show.  Suddenly the illumination moved up a notch, the world bathed in brighter light.  It occurred to me that the illumination of daylight arrives stepwise and not as if a dimmer switch was slowly being turned up.

A Celestial Kaleidoscope                                          Interval 4        7:32 am

Michael:

Visually I began to pay attention to the 180-degree panorama in front of me.   At my feet were a few stalks of goldenrod, their fluorescence still intact.  In the middle distance was a snow-covered pond with a beaver den near the southern shore.  Further away the hills above which the sun would soon rise.  

To my north, across an old farm road, was another open field with a tree line on the horizon.  Here the clouds were moving fast across a brightening sky.  They looked like cotton balls, gray in their centers, edges tinged with shades of yellow, shell-pink, and saffron.  I had expected a dull gray morning, but this one became subtly beautiful in the rising illumination.  One f-stop change every five minutes, I thought. 

John:

In the brightening light I gazed at the scene in front of me; the rectangular snow covered pond, the grasses protruding from the snow, the scattered shrubs, a line of trees along the left bank, the thick forest of maple, ash, cherry and hemlock to the right, the rounded open snow covered hills ahead, one merging to the next into a distant high forested ridge, a lovely and harmonious panorama.

To the northeast, the sky began to clear. Bands of blue appeared, a pallet upon which puffy clouds, tinged with yellow, pink and orange sailed across blown by a strong upper wind—this   racing armada of clouds formed, dissolved, and reformed into pattern after pattern. When I blinked and looked again it was if someone had spun a celestial kaleidoscope creating yet another luminous pattern.

It was unexpected, breathtaking beauty unfolding on a gray winter morning.  Oh yes, I had recently seen glimpses of stunning sunrises when I glanced out my bed room window upon awakening or when I looked to the horizon while lugging the bird feeders out to their poles.  But those views, as striking as they were, were just snapshots.  This view in front of me was streaming across the sky, a view only to be seen when sitting still.

Signal to Noise                                                           Interval 5        7:42 am

Michael:

Somewhere, carried on the cold air, I heard the drumming of a woodpecker.  I know when a woodpecker drums a resonant object, the resulting sound can carry for a great distance.  Was its fast tom-tom tempo a mating call or a warning?  It would take a better birder than me to know the difference.

About a hundred yards away, near the edge of the open field, I saw a squirrel appear out of its burrow in the snow.  It ran up a small oak sapling, seemed to grab something, then scampered down the narrow trunk and back into its den, it’s overnight fast broken.

John:

From the woods carried the nasal whi-whi-whi-whi call of a white-breasted nuthatch, a winter resident, always cheering to hear.  A few minutes later the machine gun rapping of a woodpecker rang the morning air; a short burst, a pause, another burst, then silence.  I listened, scanned the woods with my binoculars, but saw nothing and heard nothing.  Sometimes, that’s the way it was, a shred of evidence, an unsolved mystery, a woodpecker unidentified, an observation to be stored away.

Another jetliner flew over, the fourth of the morning.  Two minutes later a fifth plane flew over, and this one seemed louder producing a high pitched roar that blanketed the natural soundscape.  Anger flashed through me, anger at the harsh sounds breaking the mood of the moment.

Slowly the roar of the plane faded into the distance.  I took a couple of long slow breaths to calm my emotions and then retuned my hearing. Soon I detected crows cawing in the distance.  Nearby in the woods a branch cracked in the cold. The subtle sounds of nature slowly reemerged; the flow of the distant brook, the sigh of the wind.

In the snow in front of me a line of fresh deer tracks headed across the field and into the woods.  The snow told a story. And then it came to me.  The sighing of the wind told a story.  The shushing of the brook told a story.  The calls and songs of the birds told a story.  All of winter told a story.  Nature was a story teller.

Getting Cold                                                  Interval 6        7:52 am

John:

The sun, now a bright yellow-orange ball, inched above the horizon.  The wind picked up. I watched the lacy upper branches of a hemlock shimmy in the breeze. I gazed at the perfect egg shaped silhouette of a sugar maple.  I inhaled the clean, clear, cold morning air through my nostrils, fresh smelling invigorating air that filled me with feelings of well-being.

The parade of puffy clouds across a blue sky continued but slowly the luminous pastel shades disappeared.   A gust of wind flapped the pages of my notebook forcing me to reach for a paperclip to hold them in place. As I fastened the clip I noticed that my hands had grown cold, my fingers numb and my whole body was chilled.  It was time to wrap up the hour, an hour that had, as usual, flown by.

Michael:

More crows cawing, a light wind, a rising sun, refreshing cold air in my nostrils and lungs.  Physically I was beginning to feel the cold in my butt and hands.  Mentally, all my senses had become more focused, my mind slowed down to match my surroundings’ tempo.  A cliché, I thought, but at that moment it felt like a blessing to be alive.  

Off to my right, I heard John’s footfalls crunching in the snow.  I hadn’t paid attention to my watch, so I was surprised to hear his approach.  So soon, I thought.  John expressed the same sentiment about how fast the hour had proceeded.   I attempted to rise from my low camp chair but instead fell backward into the snow—time to shake off the cold and stiffness and hit the farm road back to our vehicles.

Epilogue

John:

We walked together back down the road sharing an unspoken sense of euphoria for the beauty we had seen and heard. 

Back at his house, Michael threw two logs into the wood stove, made a fresh pot of coffee and served up toast, buttered and slathered with cherry jam.  After an hour in nature these simple acts of breaking bread, sipping coffee, and taking in the warmth of the wood stove took on a quiet celebratory nature.

Processing our notes we realized we had similar impressions on the beauty of the sunrise, but used different words, his description of colors finer, more precise, and more nuanced than mine.  
We shared themes such as the signal to noise experience, but we each had different associations, internal dialogue around the themes.  And even though we were only a hundred yards apart there were different observations.  Michael had seen and heard a little flock of chickadees and seen a squirrel that I hadn’t.  All in all, a fine sit spot to share.

Michael:

We proceeded to walk back to our cars without much speaking, both of us still in a pleasant reverie over our early morning experiences. Back at my house, we shared hot coffee and toast with jam and spoke about our similar observations.  Although our minds’ noises were different, we both tuned in to similar signals from the natural world. 

Now, I’m writing up my reflections on a hopeful February morning. I throw another log onto the fire, sip another cup of coffee, and catch some news on the computer and radio.  I feel no urgent need to do anything on this cold Sunday morning except to recall and type up my memories of a glorious winter sunrise over a snow-blown field and pond, a quiet hour without and with John Harvey. 

Thank you, John, for an hour I will never forget.

This sit spot took place near Starucca, PA on January 22, 2021.

You can view Michael’s collection of street photography at:  http://flickr.com/photos/_smith_

You can read about more sit spots and wander walks on this blog site and in my book, The Stillness of the Living Forest:  A Year of Listening and Learning available on Amazon.com and through Shanti Arts Publishing.