Sitting Down with Nature: the sound and the silence

I'm sat on a picnic bench in a grove of pine trees, utterly still. This park is a labyrinth of walking trails and the odd stretch of boardwalk. It's small and a little sanitised, perfect for those with toddlers and dogs. But the grove in the late afternoon is empty, itself devoid of trails.

I was going to walk but I only have fifteen minutes so, instead, I've picked a picnic bench and sit here in silence. In stillness. And I wait.

The sound and the silence

There's something about pine forests that makes me feel at home every time. Something that pricks the senses and quietens the soul. I can hear far off shouts from children, the odd distant quack and, then, the dulled drilling of a woodpecker. The trees absorb sound; the earthen, needled ground dampens it. This is what I love about pine forests. They heighten the sound and they heighten the silence.

In a world of noise, environments that hoard both sound and silence enrapture me like nothing else. The breathless absence, the sudden crack. Like thunderstorms, like horror films, like pine forests.

So I sit in this muted wood as the minutes tick by. I hear the soft, staccato footsteps of a darting squirrel. I don't look around, I just wait.

A flutter of perfection appears on the table in front of me, a mere school ruler's length from my hands. The scruffy robin stands, abrupt. Eyes me up. Cocks its heads in consideration. I keep breathing. The tiny red-breasted bird accurately assesses my lack of worms and disappears as fast as it arrived.

Silence.

A jackdaw sails down between the trees, its stick black legs stretch out in front for a trademark bouncy landing. Another follows, descending in utter silence as though someone turned the sound of the world right down. Like I said, pine forests.

The footsteps are back with an added swoosh. Close, now. A scrabble, a pause, a scrabble. An appearance.

I find squirrels endlessly entertaining, particularly the ones here. Used to being fed with bird seed, if you sit still for long enough, a squirrel will soon come and investigate. This happened to me in Canada, with a chipmunk. I was sat atop the Chief, a giant granite mountain near Squamish, B.C., eating a quinoa bar. Before I knew it, a chipmunk scurried straight up to me. I cupped my hand with a few grains in it, mostly expecting the tiny creature to sprint off. Instead, it hopped straight up and sat on the edge of my palm, happily munching away. I don't make a habit of feeding wild animals aside from garden birds, but having a chipmunk sat in my palm was an unexpected joy.

The squirrels here are precocious to say the least. They are themselves an example of sound and silence; they move intermittently with sudden bursts and sudden stops. A scrabble, a stop, a whoosh, a pause, a chirrup, a silence. This squirrel scampers toward the camera sitting on the table, my finger resting on the shutter. I have no seed, but can it be sure?

It disappears in a flash of tail.

Footsteps fade and the trees exhale. It's summer but cool and the frantic bursting forth of spring has abated. A squirrel digs a hole a few metres away and indulges in a fruitless search for something buried but long forgotten. The footsteps are back and I get a fluffy, grey fly-by.

A blackbird hops around between my bench and the next, occasionally pausing to check I'm not making any moves. I love the way they flick over needles and leaves, bouncing about like the jackdaws. Speaking of jackdaws, one lunges at a passing squirrel, which wisely scampers away; an interesting kerfuffle.

My time is up and I feel utterly renewed. The world is a complicated one now as it always has been but really, when you sit down in a forest and wait, everything else ceases to exist. All that's here is the sound and the silence.