NWA 2/7/20

A Northwoods Almanac for 2/7-20, 2020  

Susurration

            In an essay penned many years ago, wildlife biologist and author John Eastman described the sound of wind in the pines in this poetic way: Pine is the larynx of the wind. No other trees unravel, comb, and disperse moving air so thoroughly. Yet they also seem to concentrate the winds, wringing mosaics of sound from gale weather - voice echoes, cries, sobs, conversations, maniacal calls. With the help of only slight imagination, they are the receiving stations to which all winds check in, filtering out their loads of B-flats, and F minors, processing auditory debris swept from all corners of the sound-bearing world.

            I’ve often wondered if I just listened closely enough, and over a long enough time, whether I could identify trees by the sound of the wind in their leaves. English novelist and poet Thomas Hardy wrote that people could identify a tree by its “susurration” (soo-sur-ay-shun), the sound of leaves in the wind. Dictionaries identify the term susurration as deriving from the Latin “susurratus,” meaning “to whisper.” 

            So, the question is how does every tree species whisper in the wind, and can we find a word that fits the sound? For instance, I always think of the sound of the wind in aspens (popples) as the sound of rain. In fact, I’ve often been fooled into thinking it was raining when it was merely the wind whispering in the aspen leaves.

            Another writer compares the sound of the wind in aspen leaves to the “fizzing of carbonated water in a freshly opened bottle,” while another likens it to “the running of a young mountain stream” or alternatively like “the marching of feet in the tree tops.”

            There’s a scholarly Greek term, too, for this – “psithurism” – which also means to whisper.            

            But I like best this definition from the 1538 Dictionary of Syr Thomas Eliot, Knyght: “Susurrus: a whystering, or soft murmuring, or such noise as trees do make with the wind, or a river when it runneth, or birds when they chatter.” 

            A “whystering.” Yes, that works! But, depending on the tree, so do words that try to be the sound itself, like soughing (“suffing”), brustling, hissing, whooshing, rattling, moaning, whistling, rushing, humming, and “sweeing.” 

            I took a deep dive into Google to find other references to susurration, and found the term was used by numerous writers. For instance, this from Denise Levertov, in her poem Silent Spring: “But listen: no crisp susurration of crickets. One lone frog. One lone faraway whippoorwill. Absence. No hum, no whirr.”

            Ursula K Leguin wrote this, “. . . not visible but audible, a slanting plane of faint sound: the susurrus of blown snow.” 

            Sue Halpern in her book Four Wings and Prayer used “susurrus” to describe the wings of millions of roosting monarch butterflies as they leave the high mountains of central Mexico in early spring.

            In William Golding’s classic book The Lord of the Flies that many of us read in high school, Golding wrote, “The deep sea breaking miles away on the reef made an undertone less perceptible than the susurration of the blood.” 

            Other folks wrote the following about susurration in various Google searches:

“The sound of water through shingle? Is that susurration?” 

“Years ago I heard it, late at night, in a little house near the sea.”

“As a prairie girl, the perpetual susurration of wind in grass was background music to my life.”

“Ever heard a Red Admiral butterfly flutter close to your ear?”

“Susurration - that sound of silk skirts rustling.”

“If I think of the word, I feel great peace, the light whisper that awakens the dawn, the gentle whisper that turns off the sunset.”

            And interestingly, versions of the word appear nearly identical in numerous languages: In Italian, “sussurare” means to whisper or murmur. “Susurro” is the Spanish version. In Arabic, it means “to whisper softly.” French and Portuguese have similar words, too.

            So, it appears to be a rather universal word for the language of trees, though the world whispers in many other ways. 

            If you’re unfamiliar with the sound, wait for a windy day and then lay down under some pines, close your eyes, and listen.

Bald Eagles vs. Wild Turkeys: from Benjamin Franklin

            The Continental Congress selected the bald eagle as the nation’s new symbol in 1782, but this didn’t sit well with Benjamin Franklin. In a very long letter in January of 1784 to his daughter Sarah Bache, he expounded on his admiration for wild turkeys over bald eagles:

            For my own part, I wish the bald eagle had not been chosen as the representative of our country; he is a bird of bad moral character; he does not get his living honestly; you may have seen him perched on some dead tree, where, too lazy to fish for himself, he watches the labor of the fishing hawk [osprey] —and when that diligent bird has at length taken a fish and is bearing it to his nest for the support of his mate and young ones, the bald eagle pursues him and takes it from him.
            With all this injustice he is never in good case, but like those among men who live by sharping and robbing, he is generally poor and often very lousy. Besides, he is a rank coward; the little kingbird, not bigger than a sparrow, attacks him boldly and drives him out of the district. He is therefore by no means a proper emblem for the brave and honest . . . 

            For in truth, the turkey is in comparison a much more respectable bird, and withal a true original native of America. Eagles have been found in all countries, but the turkey was peculiar to ours, the first of the species seen in Europe being brought to France by the Jesuits from Canada, and served up at the wedding table of Charles the ninth. He is besides, (though a little vain and silly tis true, but not the worse emblem for that) a bird of courage, and would not hesitate to attack a grenadier of the British guards who should presume to invade his farm yard with a red coat on.

Happening Now or Coming Soon

            It’s February and winter will be with us for several months yet, but life is stirring. Bears give birth to cubs in February, each of which weighs about a half-pound, each blind and helpless, but who will feast on milk that may be as much as 40% butterfat. The nursing sow will often lose one-third of her body weight over the winter feeding her cubs.

            Great horned owls are on nest, incubating eggs while snow falls upon the incubating female. She will incubate her eggs for 30 to 37 days, and the male will deliver prey to keep her alive. The female can successfully incubate her eggs even when outside temperatures are as low as -27°, and if she leaves the nest, the eggs can withstand her absence for up to 20 minutes when the temperature is as low as -13°.

Celestial Events

            The full moon occurs on Sunday, 2/9. Known in various native traditions as the “hunger” moon, the “snow” moon,” or the “when coyotes are frightened” moon, the names all reflect the fact that the winter is still alive, snow cover remains deep, and often hunger now commences for both people and animals.

            We’re up to 10 hours and 29 minutes of daylight on 2/17. On 2/18, look before dawn for Mars just below the waning crescent moon. On 2/19, look before dawn for Jupiter above the moon. And on 2/20, look again before dawn for Saturn which will now be above the moon.

Big Hearts, Fast Hearts

Valentine’s Day approaches with all its trappings of chocolates, heart-stickers, and greeting cards, but how fine it is that we celebrate a day for love and the heart. In nature, however, all that matters is that the heart is still pumping: every day, all day. 

Some animal’s hearts, like a hummingbird’s, pump with wild abandon. Hummingbirds drive the Ferrari of all hearts, their hearts racing at a maximum of 1200 beats per minute, or twenty beats a second. If you could place one’s heart in your palm, you would hold an engine about the size of a dull pencil point. 

A hummingbird’s breath must come equally fast to fuel this race engine – nearly 250 breaths per minute, or four breaths a second, and accordingly, at least says one source, hummers suffer heart attacks, aneurysms and ruptures more than any other living creature. 

            On the opposite end of the speed and size scale, there’s the blue whale, whose heart weighs nearly a ton, and is as big as a small car. The heart of a blue whale pumps about 15,000 pints of blood with every beat, compared to about 8 pints in a human, thus its aorta is large enough for an adult human to crawl through. A blue whale’s heart at rest is said to beat 4 to 8 times a minute, while its breath may come only once every hour before and after a sustained dive. 

Whether at 10 to 20 beats per second in the hummingbird, or indiscernible, as in the painted turtle dug into the lake bottom and waiting out the winter in a suspended animation, the heart operates as life’s engine, race car fast or glacially slow. 

We humans have chosen the physical heart to symbolize the source of our life force, our vitality, our will to live. We say a person has a great heart when he or she is courageous, or generous, or compassionate. We speak of the heart of the matter as the most important thing among all others. If something is heart-felt, it derives from love, from caring, from humility. When we are heart-broken, we are distraught and hit bottom. If we are heart-sick, we feel a deep loss; a heart throb is someone we are physically attracted to; a heartless person sees only himself and no one else.

            So, from Kathleen Dean Moore, take this to heart about our lives here in Wisconsin’s Northwoods: “To love is to affirm the absolute worth of what you love and to pledge your life to its thriving – to protect it fiercely and faithfully for all time.”