Seasonal Sounds
All aspects of my work — music, coaching, end of life care — are rooted in deep listening. In September 2023, I wanted to know what a daily practice of intentional listening would reveal and so began an outdoor meditation. Each night for one year, I sat on my balcony and listened. This simple ritual quickly revealed an infinitely complex sonority of insects, animals, wind, water, trees and people dovetailing in seamless continuity. During the daytime, I also recorded sounds that drew my attention and compiled the following video mosaics for each lunar cycle.
September 13 - October 12, 2023
Moon 1
Mid-September is a cacophony of late-summer songs; a raucous choir of crickets and frogs overlaying trees lush and full of leaves. Neighbors take phone calls on their porches and walk with friends in the warm evenings. At 48 degrees the crickets and peepers stop singing and I cannot express how excited I am to observe this. No two nights are the same — each a tiny phrase of a grand symphony.
October 13 - November 13, 2023
Moon 2
The shift from mid-October to November has invited a natural turning inward. Cold ushers in a subtle palette: the distant hum of highway, a single leaf dancing on the ground. I hear my heartbeat echoing off the blanket bundled around my neck. The geese have arrived; I love their flying lines in the sky. As temperatures drop, a gradual decrescendo: people walk less, traffic calms, and the last cricket chirps low and slow on November 4th. I miss their songs but in perfect synchronicity an owl calls on the first quiet night. It’s now very cozy to sit outside when the temperature is above freezing — what felt cold just days ago now feels comfortable. I find this constant adjustment of perception fascinating.
November 14 - December 12, 2023
Moon 3
with no leaves
I see far
through the forest
Sitting outside each night has shifted my cycle from full moon to new moon. Thank you body, thank you Luna. Falling snow brings my awareness closer in. I am heavily layered in blankets as heat becomes sacred — it’s a good look. Lulled by cold, my mind stills and clears the way for vivid dreams. As the world grows quiet, I observe that any thought I have is powerful enough to drown out all of the sounds around me — even the train whistle blaring its tower of harmonics.
December 13, 2023 - January 11, 2024
Moon 4
The late night gravel of a vixen calling her mate. Her scratchy cry carries over laughter of a nearby holiday gathering. I am more familiar now with the space surrounding my home. I hear the shape of roads, the north and southbound trains, familiar patterns of drumming rain, and muffled conversations through windows and walls. My downstairs neighbor smokes less in the cold; I seldom hear the flicking of her lighter. My next-door neighbor will appear at any time of night to begin raking, shoveling, clipping, or sweeping. She has dementia and cares for the entire street.
January 12 - February 9, 2024
Moon 5
When I began this practice, I was nervous to sit out in the silent cold of winter.
At no point has there been silence, only different hues of aliveness .
February 10 - March 10, 2024
Moon 6
winter waking up
to songs sung
through bare branches
February temperatures rise above freezing accompanied by an increase in traffic. People move more as our blood warms; we too, are rivers thawing.
March 11 - April 8, 2024
Moon 7
In mid-March, after months of quiet nights, the peepers begin to chirp. I’m so excited to hear them again - it’s like reuniting with friends.
Animal-like, this listening, I feel more connected to my cat. She is so tuned in to the soundscape that every little click catches her attention. Some nights she curls up on my lap purring under the blanket and others she launches herself onto the balcony charged up by the wind.
April 9 - May 7, 2024
Moon 8
Spring! Peepers continue to sing through early May, joined by rustling young leaves and squeaking creatures in the night. River rushes over the bounds of its bed while owls call out during the afternoon.. Birds sing hours before dawn until the sky is fully dark again.
May 8 - June 6, 2024
Moon 9
The simple act of noticing. In witnessing songs that take months to sing, I contemplate the infinite rhythms of a massive celestial body down to a single cell comprising my body. This unfathomable coming and going leaves me in awe.
A single cricket began to sing in early June. The songs of frogs and crickets, so familiar to me, are woven into the soundtrack of my life since I was a child. Yet it has taken me 40 years to notice that: frogs sing first. Peepers sing for months on their own before turning the stage over to the crickets in June. I am so glad to be closer to the the nuance of these songs.
June 7 - July 5, 2024
Moon 10
For the first time, sitting with eyes closed, I witness the direction of a thunderstorm as it passes overhead. I am learning to track the storms inside myself. The sound of wind and rain is a dramatic change, infinitely complex in tones and tempos. I feel an increasingly deepening reverence for my life and time spent in this place, this planet.
July 6 - August 5, 2024
Moon 11
We are mirrors; rich layers of interconnected aliveness reflecting back the complex ecosystems of one another. My spine, an echo of the tree trunk branching to become leaves feeling the world.
August 6 - September 2, 2024
Moon 12
Crickets, clicks and slithering things.
Hearing the gradation of season change via the trees. A full summer oak, ripe with hundreds of thousands of leaves, whisks and whirls in the wind. Towards the end of summer I notice the sound of still-green-leaves beginning to dry out; sounds of hydration. Leaves come flying down tree by tree in a continuous choreography; each bare branch sounding its naked whipping in the wind. A tree might take a day or a week to fully release the year’s growth; the sound of halfway unloaded branches. Leaves dragging across the ground blend into rakes scraping and a sheet, heavy with leaves, dragging towards the woods. Some nights a single leaf blows onto the screen where I am listening, scratching for a moment before falling away.
September 3 - October 1, 2024
Moon 13
songs breathing life into
my own beating heart
waves and waves
cresting
in the seeming space