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Deep Listening

11/29/2013

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Check out this interview with Gordon Hempton with Krista Tippet of On Being.

These words and thoughts are from Gordon talking in the interview.

Sounds he talks about when entering into the Hoh rainforest:
cars, human sounds, artificial cloth rubbing on itself..then we head off down the trail...
moss drapery--
twitter of winter wren, high pitched twittering sound 100 feet away--
Hoh River that drains the from the forest, echoing off the far side of the valley, bugling of the Roosevelt elk.
Adrenaline assertion of what it means to be male and wild.
The horizon extends from miles in every direction...the bugling sound is a a magic flute as a result of traveling through the forest; the same acoustics as a cathedral. Nothing shouts importance.
Trying to save a square inch of silence of  the log with moss
Well, that one square inch of silence-- i hear the presence of everything...
the trees remind me of miracles... they have happened for millions of years...
what is more profound than silence..not distracted by email, cell phones. Myself is revealed and i know who i am. There are answers in the silence.

Words evaporate.

The hike out is hardly talking at all. If we talk, we talk in a whisper.

Silence is an endangered species and is on the verge of extinction.

Places in nature that never have any noise pollution are almost gone.

Experience of a place. What it means to be in a place. The sounds define that place.

Earth is a solar powered juke box.

Poetics of space... let it exist.  Stay open to all the possibilities to being a  better listener and open to change. Silence essential to every person's development.

Time to honor  silence is an opportunity to feel everything around it.
Be in my  being. Joy and reminded of who I am and then I can go out into the day.

Listening is not about sound. Listening is about place. When you listen to a place, you take it all in.

I hear music coming from the land..something as simple as a driftwood log... waves coming in, pebbles moving, entering into a giant sitka spruce log...fibers of the log vibrate from the sound of the waves...the world's largest violin.

Our music is a reflection of who we are, where we are.

Listening between human beings...

Technology and listening...limit my use of cell phone, I don't listen to the radio, I limit my exposure to technology..its all about competition. If I want information, i get it face to face...

Children make their choices based on experience and so that is why it is important to go on hikes into the wilderness...their thoughts will empty out too...

Research shows that in noisy areas, people are less likely to help each other...the explanation goes all the way to silence...what I mean beyond the silence..the context. The higher the ambient noise level and we become cutoff because we are cut off from a level of intimacy from each other...disassociated from others...we're busy not listening to others because we've reached our limit of what we can take in.

Listening is our sense of security. Quiet places are generally safe places. They calm us. Real listening is about  being vulnerable....keep your mind open in listening to another person, you can dare to risk what they are trying to say. Feel your own emotional response. Listening in nature helps us to listen to people. 

Relationships between self, others, growth, vulnerability...better communicators.

The importance of saving silence...not one place set aside on planet earth from noise pollution...we only need one law to set aside places in national parks that do just that. Quiet reveals what is possible and right.

Silence is not a luxury. It is essential to our lives.

When I go to a quiet place, I get to ask my ancestors questions. 
Why have our ears evolved to hear faint bird song? It depended on our taking the right path to follow the sounds for food and water, extended favorable habitat that  can also support human life.

"Do you know what it's like to listen to 1,256 square miles when the sun is rising?"

Just be in your being because the answers are there.

True listening is worship...be quiet, be receptive, be present...

Get down, get close, listen.

Gordon Hempton is founder and vice president of The One Square Inch of Silence Foundation based in Joyce, Washington. He's the author of One Square Inch of Silence: One Man's Quest to Preserve Quiet.
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Bulls of Carmel Valley

11/29/2013

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Picture
Bulls of Carmel Valley --
resting in the sun,
softly chewing their cud,
light on whiskers,
autumn gold,
curious, placid, self-contained.
Numbered--
to become meat.
Looking into their eyes,
their curly-haired being,
their massive bones and generous shapes,
outlined by the sun.
Wanting to make peace with their fate.

Picture
Picture
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Thanksgiving Bobcat

11/29/2013

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I came home after a twenty- eight mile bike ride out the Valley Road, preparing a tart for the evening and looked out the window to glimpse this bobcat making its way through my back yard area about ten feet from the house. I quickly got my camera and went around the house to see if I might see it. It was in the bushes so much like its own color I almost didn't see it. Then it caught my scent and/or heard me, jumped up on the tree branch just long enough for me to get this photo. Such a special gift .
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State of the Carmel River - Nov. 16, 2013

11/16/2013

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Los Padres Dam Nov 16, 2013 Notice the large boulder in the foreground of this picture in relation to the boulder in the picture below taken two months earlier. The water has gone down by approximately thirty feet in two months. This is the water reserve as we move into the winter. Hope we have rain!
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This picture of the Los Padres Dam was taken September 17, 2013.
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Los Padres Dam, November 16, 2013 Notice the difference in water level from that of the picture below taken two months before.
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Picture
Crossing the dry river bed near the Little League Field. Some trees are dying in this location and along other locations of the river where it is dried up. The water in the aquifer in some locations is down to thirty-five feet below the ground surface.
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Homage to the buckeye trees along the Carmel River trail...
created by a passer by.
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Golden Eagle at September Ranch

11/14/2013

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Watching for live food... ©Paola Berthoin
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Wild with Nature

11/12/2013

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Been wandering around the internet and came a upon these evocative images of Seaweed Women and Moss Men, conceptualized by two artists from Finland and Norway, Karoline Hjorth & Riitta Ikonen. 


tune in, in tune with the wild outside, 
inside, becoming seaweed
becoming moss outside
becoming earth inside
becoming wind outside
becoming river inside
remembering.
Picture
found charcoal, drawing hands © Paola Berthoin
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Fall Abundance

11/11/2013

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Abundance ©Paola Berthoin
Created along a trail near the river a couple years ago. The trail was covered with acorns and this land art piece was a meditation for that abundance and reminder of the renewal and optimism of the natural world. Picking up each smooth, rounded and pointed acorn, placing it next to its kin, an oak tree waiting to sprout  given the right conditions...maybe to live for hundreds of years.  How do you respond to where you live?
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    Author
    Paola Berthoin is the designer/creator/publisher of  Passion for Place: Community Reflections on the Carmel River Watershed. Her focus is inspiring and educating people about the natural world through the arts. She is available to design your book, create (illustrate and write) interpretive materials for your watershed community, consult for healthy gardens, paint a commissioned painting of your favorite place in the Carmel River Watershed and beyond!


    When we allow wildness, our own spirit, to flourish within, we can also respect and allow nature’s spirit, the wild outside, to exist.
             - Paola Fiorelle Berthoin
                                                                                                                                                               

    Blog photographs, land art, and text © Paola Berthoin, unless otherwise noted. 
    All Rights Reserved.

    Picture
    Photograph © Marie Butcher

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