Maps.01 | Speaking in trees

‘Though the quiet deep of solitude reigned in that vast and nearly boundless forest, nature was speaking with her thousand tongues, in the eloquent language of night in a wilderness. The air sighed through ten thousand trees…’
James Fenimore Cooper.



Today’s society is a heavily noise polluted environment where sanctuary and stillness is a rarity. The need for silent retreat however is still present and has been since past times when individuals would retire to sanctuaries of silence for re-composure of the mind and spirit. Today we venture into our surroundings and inevitably into nature to find this quilt of bliss and a re connection from what we have been removed so far from – a sense of place.

These woods are full of silence but where Cage's silence was filled with his nervous system and blood circulation, here it is filled with the gentle creaking of entangled bark and the wind that wraps itself around this timberous world. Sitting in the middle of these trees, with dappled light somersaulting dust through the air I realise my hearing is becoming more acute, more alert to the most tiny of noises, the most secrete of sounds. Within these woods and these splintering trees the main protagonist is in fact the wind.

Wind, by its very nature is silent unless objects are put in its way, in this sense the trees become the players, orchestrated by the wind, tuned by the seasons. It seems that trees have voices with the passing of a breeze, some moan, some stretch others become tempestuous knots.

This sanctuary is becoming rare, this place that we are tied and bound to, this earth that we will all one day return to. These trees that provide such a humbling sense of place, a sense of wonder and of sanctuary, if you listen closely you’ll hear them speaking...

Speaking Trees MP3

Q. What is your audio sanctuary? Where do you go to listen? What are your thoughts & memories of such places? Have we become so visually biased that we have forgotten our ears?