When you want to get to know someone, you listen to the stories they have to share. We might ask some questions once in a while, but mostly we watch and listen and that’s how we learn more about who they are and how they exist in the world. We might go visit them in their spaces and ask more questions, like why do they hang out in a particular space more than another? Slowly we start to build a deeper understanding and awareness of who this someone is, and usually, deeper connection.

Listening to the more than human world is a fundamental piece of learning from the land. It decenters the human and allows us a chance to participate in the always ongoing conversations between birds, winds, trees, rivers, insects, and all the myriad of forms which inhabit the worlds we too inhabit.

This episode is a return to ritualized listening. While I try to listen all of the time, it’s around this time of year when my ears really pick up on novel sounds, calls and songs which have been missing from my local bioregion since at least the Fall, but some since the previous Spring. The theme of this show, of recording the early morning bird song in the warming days of Spring, recurs every year, and has since the last four years I believe. Its a good ritual to maintain.

A quote from two years ago:

This tradition is about relationship building through active listening and paying attention. We can’t know someone without listening to them, without giving them attention and acknowledging them. By listening to the birds and working towards understanding them we start to identify their needs, “desires” and habits. By listening to a human friend we do the same. Through this identification we might also develop empathy and care, compassion and love. Seems worth the listen to me.

Why not ritualize this interspecies relationship building and also honour it through highlighting and uplifting on this podcast platform as I might a researcher, author, or knowledge holder? Once we’ve listened where do we go from there? How do we deepen the bonds that listening creates? Can we know the land better through listening to the more-than-human world?