Giving Nature a Voice

Many tourist traps are just that: promises that lure you in but rarely deliver. I expected the same this week while walking to the Sea Organ in Zadar, Croatia. It's a collection of tubes build within marble steps leading to the sea; the waves lap in and "play" the pipes.

I'm not sure why this installation actually touched me. Maybe it was that the music was actually beautiful and not the rambling jumble of notes I'd expected. Maybe it was the sunset reflecting on the water. Maybe it was the comfort of leaning my head on my husband's shoulder as we took a much needed break from everyday life.

Probably all of these, but also the fact that I wasn't just witnessing a man-made object. It felt like a creation that was celebrating nature instead of stifling it; it was, literally, giving the sea a voice.

My mind has been bent in this direction for awhile. I recently attended a launch event for Is a River Alive?, Robert MacFarlane's latest book, which argues an emphatic yes. I'm also halfway through We're All From Somewhere Else, a prose/poetry hybrid by Ruth Padel that explores the similarities between natural and human migration. On the plane home I started the audio book Wilding by Isabella Tree, the story of a southwest England estate giving its land back to nature. And with the weather turning dry and warm, I've been exploring the canal walks and hiking trails in West Yorkshire, learning to recognize the different birds by their song.

It's a beautiful thing to let nature run its course, or to emphasize and scaffold it. Scrubland in the UK has traditionally been seen as wasteland because it isn't productive--an emotional holdover from WWII--but it's slowly being recognized as natural in its own right. Allowing this "unproductive" land to thrive has strong impacts on biodiversity, not to mention the beauty of treading near low heather or gorse on a moorland hike.

The appreciation of nature isn't a new idea, of course, even for me. One my sharpest childhood memories is of collecting pinecones and acorns in the front yard, and watching gray squirrels shimmy up the oak trees. I remember poking at the moss growing in the cracks of cobblestone and helping my mom plant rosebushes. I remember the shockingly strong pull of the river's current, and the bright red of the cardinal as it landed on my window sill. No, it's not a new idea. But it's one I've forgotten to focus on, and am glad to discover again.