My parents had to stress two lessons when raising me: the first was “take responsibility for the space you inhabit” and the second was “look both ways before you cross the street.” I am not naturally a careful or aware person, and anyone who had to corral me for the first eighteen years of my life knows it. I tend to tune out the world without trying. I realized all too recently that my unconscious approach to life is not the most sustainable. The truth is that inattentive people are more likely to hurt their loved one’s feelings or step into oncoming traffic. Tired of walking through life like an absentminded hiker, whistling under my breath and keeping my eyes trained on my shoelaces, I took inspiration from Annie Dillard’s collection of environmental prose “A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek” and sought attentiveness at the nearest stream.
As a Grove City College resident, Wolf Creek was the obvious option. If I was to get the real Annie Dillard experience, the creek needed to be physically close and fairly urban. I needed to learn the intricacies of a place that already existed in the periphery of my daily life. I picked my way down to the bank of Wolf Creek, which was muddy from the recent rain. I sat on my rain jacket and promptly failed at my main objective by lapsing into an extended daydream. When I came to, I remembered I was supposed to be noticing stuff, so I shifted positions a bit and tried to focus. I have never struggled with sitting still but doing so without zoning out required a near-excruciating amount of intentionality. Processing the whole of Wolf Creek in this way felt like drinking out of a firehose, so I decided to narrow my focus. I would become aware of birds.
I could hear them calling in the branches above me, so I began to try to pick out individual voices and melodies, pinpointing their general location in the trees. Once I learned where they were, I could spot them twitching about on twigs or flitting down to the ground. Fat, friendly robins came quite close to me after I waited for a bit, and I tried to whistle their tunes back at them. Exercising attention to birds demonstrated the sizeable gaps in my avian knowledge, which I attempted to rectify via google reverse image search. Some moved too quickly, and I was reduced to drawing the best likeness I could manage in hopes of identifying them later. Inspired by Mary Lennox, I followed a robin as it hopped around the brush and felt a rush of satisfaction when I witnessed it take a twig in its beak and wing its way up to a barely visible nest.
The next time I came to the creek, it was warm and quiet, and I was armed with a field guide. I knew this time around that the dark-headed birds were dark-eyed juncos and the very small one I saw was probably a nuthatch. I kept my eyes peeled for chickadees, having read of their abundance in this area of the state. The more I discovered about birds, the more I enjoyed watching them. With successive stops at lower campus, my ability to track their songs, movements, and interactions improved rapidly. I even noticed them without specifically looking or listening. Proudly, I stopped my friend in her tracks one afternoon to announce that the bird in yonder tree was actually a female house sparrow. The ability to register bird songs and identify their singers was a talent I had previously left to the purview of my enthusiastic mother—an impressive bird hobbyist in her own right. I came to realize that that ability could be mine too, with enough practice. Little by little, I began to understand something about Rachel Carson’s fear of a silent spring as my own season was enriched by newly discernible instrumentation of birdsong.
As I listened to the birds, the noise of Wolf Creek crept in too. Tuning into small avian chirpings required me to listen past the other elements of the ecosystem. I was forced to register the sounds of rushing water, crunchy gravel, and rustling breeze before I could relegate them to background noise. I was surprised by the loudness of the cars on the road and the students crossing to and from the apartments. The barking of a dog rings out as loud as a gunshot; a sharp and foreign disturbance in the soundscape. The auditory evidence of human habitation around the creek is impossible to miss with a little careful listening. Although manmade noises are unnatural, they blend with the sounds of the creek in a way that is oddly comforting. I know that I am part of this place for a while, and I’ll add my own footsteps and whistled melodies to the aural landscape I have learned.
In a few weeks, I will pack all my warm weather clothes into my car and drive south for the summer. In truth, I’ll be disappointed to leave Wolf Creek just as it turns well and truly green. In the six months that I’ve inhabited Grove City College dorms, I have had a taste of independent living. My parents aren’t here to remind me to be careful, slow down, or look up. No one will reprimand me for walking around or eating meals with earbuds in. It is all too simple for me to create a schedule and circle through it each day, careless of the places where I sleep, eat, and study. Carelessness is irresponsible and immature and blissfully easy. Learning something meaningful about a place is tougher. Annie Dillard had her muskrats, and I had my robins. The birds were my focusing lens through which I experienced Wolf Creek. Developing my birdwatching skills brought the beauty of the place I temporarily inhabit into fuller focus. I learned how inadvertently loud I am. I was forced to focus on something external, to be silent and careful and intentional. I practiced sharing a space—a stretch of creek, a college campus—with small creatures who were working and singing here before me and will continue to do so when I am gone. Wolf Creek and its avian inhabitants are a gift to be celebrated and enjoyed. I have begun to ponder what kind of service I could give in return. Right now, I am simply grateful to practice attentive membership in the creek community. He who has ears, let him hear! The birds are singing.
