Wednesday, March 5th, 2026 - listening

I have been given a challenge: ‘A silent encounter (for an hour) – what do you hear, sense, notice, are drawn to…?’ I’m not doing too well at sitting still and just listening, but I try. I’ve brought a pencil and paper, but the pencil turns out to be a blunt white pencil crayon and completely useless, so I resort to trying to scribble sounds down using mud and a twig.

wind rustling in the trees - dog barking - birds calling - knocking sounds from the quarry that’s about a couple of miles a way - distant voices - my breath - scratching of my stick as I write.

The brown mud holds many shades - from pale to dark, bright orange in places. I glimpse flecks of bright red from fallen berries missed by the birds. Pale yellow grass straggles around the edge of the pond. A bright green coating of moss covers the tree trunks rising from the middle of the pond; holly leaves bring a colour to the otherwise, bare trees. Here and there poking out of the water, a few bright green leaves have begun the appear.

It’s the textures in the mud and water that attract me. There’s a whole world going on in there. Occasionally small bubbles rise to the surface; I can see myself reflected in them. A meniscus around each one - ripples radiating out around a tiny fragment of air trapped inside a bubble. Anything that sticks out of the water has a set of tiny ripples like contours around them.

Fine particles of earth hang suspended in the water, moving slowly as sunlight catches them. I stir the water, watching tiny atoms swirling and settling.

I’ve brought eight strips of paper and place these around the pond; some I hang in trees, letting a couple touch the water, some I bury, and one I curl up and tuck into a hole in the base of the tree. Whether they will still be there when I return is anyone’s guess.