"Well, when you really listen, when you really keep your mind open and listening to another person — and by the way, I highly recommend that if a person wants to increase their ability to understand another person that they start out listening to nature because you're totally uninvested in the outcome of nature. You can just take it all in, all the expressions. And isn't it wonderful that, when a bird sings, that we do hear it as music? The bird doesn't sing for our benefit. So there's a lot of joy in that listening, and when we become better listeners to nature, we also become better listeners to each other so that, when another person is speaking with you, you don't have to search for what you want them to say. You can, you know, dare to risk what they really are trying to say and, you know, ask them too: Is this really what you're saying? And feel your own emotional response as they talk . . . ."
If you'd like to listen to the rest of this wonderful interview with Gordon Hempton, acoustic ecologist, including some wonderful recordings of wild places in the world please visit the
On Being website. If you listen closely to the background sounds during the interview, you'll hear the call of the loon - so sweetly remembered from Left Foot Lake.
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