“The mountains are calling and I must go.” John Muir (1838-1914), Scottish Naturalist, from a letter to his sister in 1873
Ssshhh. Listen. What do you hear? What would you hear if you were in Yosemite National Park right now, walking along the Merced River? What we can hear in our natural Soundscape has the power to energize and heal us, reduce stress and anxiety, boost our immune system, catalyze our imagination, and stoke our sense of vision, connection and purpose. Biophony and geophony; it’s where the WILD sounds are!
In the 19th c., American Renaissance thinkers celebrated spiritual renewal in the heart of Nature. Transcendental authors like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Margaret Fuller, and Nathaniel Hawthorne elevated and embedded pristine natural vistas, fragrances, textures, tastes, and soundscapes in our collective imagination, and codified them in our sensorium. We all wanted to experience those sacred natural places and find our soul renewed and inflamed. They, along with 20th c. pioneers in conservation who transferred their ideas into policy and practice, designed our communal Soulscapes, the places where Nature’s symphony and our heart’s longing intersect.
Giants like Aldo Leopold, John Muir, and Gifford Pinchot were visionaries and exemplars, captivating our sense of communal rootedness. Pinchot, the first head of the U.S. Forest Service, and Teddy Roosevelt, with his expansion of the National Parks System, popularized the term “conservation.” We owe them all a debt of gratitude for seeding our imagination for a fertile future, and deepening our bond with the natural world.
We treasure our National Parks and found ourselves making those sacred pilgrimages part of our family and community ethos. The mountains were calling. The hills were alive. The oceans sang in our dreams. As sojourners from the Midwest, we may have called it “vacation,” but when we returned home, we found ourselves longing for Yellowstone and Glacier, Yosemite, Muir Woods, the seaside and the sparkling lakes, the rivers and the deserts, our “HOME” that held our micro-homes.
As the 20th c. gave way to a new millennium, our sacred places and our wild-kin began to disappear. Slowly, we began to understand the scope of the casualties of the Industrial-Techno Revolution that paved the way for planetary ecosystemic meltdown, the toxification of our soil, air, and water, and the onset of global dis-ease for human and more-than-human denizens of Earth.
In the 21st c., we are in the midst of the Sixth Mass Extinction, caused primarily by human intervention. A mass extinction is a geologic era in which a high percentage of biodiversity or distinct species, including bacteria, fungi, plants, birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, fish, invertebrates, etc. dies out. The last mass extinction occurred 65.5 million years ago and decimated the dinosaurs. Unlike the five previous mass extinctions in the biosphere, this one is being driven primarily by human activity, specifically (though not limited to) the toxification of land, water and air, energy and water consumption and waste in the context of unsustainable food production, deforestation, and climate change.
Also, in the 21st c., HOPE is resurging. Organizations around the world devoted to addressing the most serious and devastating effects of climate change, loss of biodiversity, energy consumption and waste are connecting like massive mycelial networks beneath Earth’s surface connect the wood-wide-web. We are beginning to address the effects of global solastalgia, the pain and distress associated with the loss of our natural Home. It can produce psycho-physical side effects like anxiety, depression and profound sadness as we experience our beautiful biosphere collapsing into a toxic cesspool. We are finding new ways – learning from Nature – how to be healed from our self-inflicted dis-ease.
We are witnessing the rise of holistic health providers who recognize the need for outside-the-box thinking for a planet of languishing humans who are toxifying their Home, and causing global extinction. Social Prescribing has taken the U.K. by storm:
Social prescribing is slowly making its presence felt in the U.S. “Instead of just addressing ‘What’s the matter with you?’ social prescribing addresses ‘What matters to you?’”  (Julia Hotz, The Connection Cure) Social prescribing involves non-clinical activities to facilitate social connection, promoting social and cultural immersion as integral to health and wellness. Social activities have been shown to combat morbidity, isolation, anxiety, depression, and loneliness. These might include book clubs, art, dance, cultural exchange, music, movement, service (volunteering), and Nature immersion, among others.
Nature-based Social Prescribing, or “Green Social Prescribing” recognizes the need for healthy human-Nature interface. Green social prescribing focuses on improving physical and psycho-social health through purposeful Nature interventions. Nature-immersive therapy such as community gardening, Shinrin-Yoku, Nature clubs, birding, lepidoptery, Nature-journaling, Nature-inspired art, or Nature-photography, Nature-inspired design, horticulture therapy, and wild edible foraging are some ways of enjoying Adventures in Nature. And there are so many more available to heighten the senses, excite the imagination, relieve stress, improve balance and focus, overall health and wellness.
One crucial facet of Nature-based or Green Social Prescribing that is garnering attention is natural sound therapy. Soundscape ecology studies sounds of biophony (sounds generated by biological organisms like animals – lions, crickets, frogs, birds) and bioacoustics (animal communication), geophony (sounds generated by non-biological Nature like wind, rain, thunder, shifting subterranean strata), and anthropophony (human-generated sound).
As you might imagine, there is an environmental justice issue that arises when those without access, usually the socioeconomically depleted, become casualties with no access to plentiful natural sound. Biodiverse sound sources, including geophony and biophony, are critical for stress reduction, healing, relaxing, and energizing human health, not to mention the necessity of healthy pockets of decreased human-generated sound for healthy bioacoustics like localization and mating calls in our more-than-human kin. Sadly, many are excluded from access to natural soundscapes based on socioeconomic location.
Research is revealing the interconnections between access to Nature and human health. A robust soundscape ecology has proportionate positive effects on human health and wellbeing. Who rightly has access is a critical issue for environmental justice, and everyone should have access.
Where do you enjoy natural sound?
Take into consideration where you live, work, and recreate for soundscape quality. What noise must you reduce or eliminate (within your auspices of auditory control) in order to experience biodiverse biophony and geophony?
When you find that place where you can hear birdsong and gentle water flow, crickets and owls, immerse yourself. Learn from Thoreau, Emerson, and Muir. Nature is calling. Go there. You are invited to a full-sensory immersion. Listen. Smell. Touch. Taste. See. Put it all together. S-L-O-W-L-Y. Read the “Room” of Nature. What is the energy pattern? Let that healing energy seep into you. Let yourself seep into the Soulscape. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
