Ever wondered what happens when learning music and solitude collide? I did. Come with me on a journey to “The Musical Forest.”
I’ve been learning a little bit about music lately. An art form that has, apparently, passed me by all these years. A week alone in the Podlaskie National Park seemed like as good a time as any to offer myself up and indulge in some new sounds, phrases, patterns and emotions.
Are you with me? Here goes!
As I stepped across the forest threshold, the opening notes of a new musical score began swirling through the silence. My heartbeat marked time; my wet boots tread out a steady rhythm over beds of pine needles and tangled roots. In the high treble spaces glowed fragments of birdsong, while underneath ran deep currents of groaning trees and whispering wind.
This was it! I was a lone musician who had wandered into an ancient amphitheater — this cathedral with no ceiling but endless sky, no orchestra but that of wilderness. An opportunity to improvise that would transport me into strange harmonies and dissonances. As I walked deeper under the towering woodwind pipes of oak and hornbeam, I let anticipation rise within my chest. The tempo increased slightly with the excitement of the coming movements. What themes would emerge across days of wordless wandering? What final coda would resolve when I re-emerged to civilization’s din?
There was only one way for this to unfold… into the heart of the forest I flowed, eager to hear the next unfolding notes within “The Musical Forest.”
The First Movement – Allegro
The symphony begins slowly, tentatively — a testing of acoustics in this cathedral with no walls. My boots crunch out a rhythmic melody over beds of oak leaves and pine needles. The tempo is allegro, fueled by anticipation of the solitude stretching out over the days ahead. I am but a lone musician wandering into the forest’s expansive hollowness.
As I walk deeper beneath green vaulted ceilings, daily life melts away note by note. Gone are the myriad sounds and interruptions of reality, replaced by earth’s more eternal refrains. A lone wood thrush trills a descending melody high above in the canopy. Below, a red squirrel rustles in the understory, inadvertently accenting the bird’s high notes with percussive scratches. The two disparate sounds intertwine in the silence between trees.
I hum quietly, an improvised response seamlessly woven into the wood thrush’s next fluted phrase. We seem to perform an impromptu duet, two kindred musicians delighting in this song without beginning, middle or end. My answering melody hangs in the quiet air long after the last warbling notes dissipate into the skyward reach of oak and pine.
The Second Movement – Andante
Solitude seeps in slowly, subtly over the next movements like a creeping chill. The tempo is andante, and marks my heartbeat as I traverse whispering fields of tall grass and circles of dark water. Cattails sway soundlessly along the marshy edges, their velvet heads obscuring and then revealing reflections of sky and cloud.
The only accompaniment comes from my own footsteps, a steady percussive rhythm keeping time. Breath in, breath out — the underlying meter I cannot escape. In the absence of voices, small details of wilderness stand out in sharp relief, like the lingering trill of a solo oboe. The papery rustle of a snake through lakeside rushes. Filtered afternoon light dappling the forest floor into rhythmic patterns of sun and shadow.
I linger long by the glassy lake, watching dragonflies trace filigree patterns atop the water’s fragile skin, their tiny movements setting off ripples that distort and erase the reflected cathedral of pine boughs and hardwood canopies. The bugs dance ephemeral circles, held separate by forces unseen yet also connected in their shared improvisation.
As darkness slowly lowers, the chill creeps closer, and solitude shifts from peaceful reflection into something more ominous. Each growl and crackle from the darkened forest sets my heart thudding off-count — allegro, presto, staccato. Eyes strain against blackness holding formless things I cannot see. I hunker solitary in my wooden cabin and hum half-remembered lyrics to fill the void. As those sightless hours pass by, I set out early to walk shivering over cold earth until flushed by dawn’s rosy fingertips.
The Third Movement – Adagio
Rhythms slow across long hours spent walking through tangled understory. Chest-high walls of thorny brush snag my clothing and scrape unprotected skin as I walk deeper into the forest. Blood wells from thoughtless scratches, droplets spattering leaf litter in a syncopated Leyden motif.
The adagio tempo drags me deeper into disconnected daydreams, wholly occupied by placing each foot carefully amid the clamor of blackberry canes and stunted saplings. Time stretches, falters and stutters to my faltering heartbeat. Have moments or hours passed in this soundless sea of green? I rest finally upon a downed oak, its cratered trunk forming a perfect seat amid the chaos.
There I sit, motionless but for my heaving chest, ears straining beyond my own harsh breath for snatches of music. After endless empty bars, a solitary note emerges — a jay’s piercing song, both outside and within. Two whistled notes answered by a third, over and over, a simple motif echoing through the trees. I seize upon those clear notes like a lifeline, harmonizing my own shrill refrain between the woodpecker’s chorus.
We repeat our primitive duet through the afternoon, grounding me within the green confusion. Shadows shift, and I feel time’s movement once more. When the permute finally ceases, I rise on creaking knees and follow the jay’s fading melody back toward familiar melodies.
The Fourth Movement – Scherzo
Emerging from the trackless forest into familiar refrains — the scherzo dances of light on restless lakes, the lively chorus of frogs and birds heralding the sunsets. These closing nights have a capricious, fanciful air as I meander, unrestrained across the landscape.
These are my last euphoric hours before the coda’s closing notes. Soon I must return from this place of unrestrained movement and tossing melodies back into the ordered allegro of human construction. But for now, I luxuriate in the scherzo’s rushing current, buoyed up by the symphony swelling toward its resonant final cadence.
The Coda – Diminuendo
On the last morning, I pause by the lake, knowing these refrains will continue long after I take my leave. The thrush’s whistled melody and the chatter of marsh wren form the bright leading notes of the coda. Soon will come the closing diminished chords; my footsteps receding into urbane glass and concrete, the forest’s lived-in harmonies drowned out by hydraulic squeals and horns, everything loud and overloud.
But for now, I linger suspended — the tuning fork still humming from days spent resonating within the melody of “The Music Forest.” Part of me seeks to remain here under the high cathedral arches, adding my voice to the dawn aubade and dusk vespers. To stay always wandering these soundscapes rich with oak-leaf susurrations and raven calls emerging from the ephemeral marshes.
The coda fades slowly, gradually, on these final hours beneath pines unbothered. Bittersweet melodies sink into my marrow, accruing a lifetime’s worth of whole notes and sustained tones, rests and fermatas. When the last echoes dissolve into unobstructed sky, I rise to walk once more. My boots once again crunch down an imagined aisle out from this living amphitheater.
Emerging from the trees, I squint against harsh sunlight, ears straining for the barest fragments of fading music. But now there is only the atonal dissonance of modern man — engines gunning impatiently past, the rumble of tractors and chattering of lawn mowers. I stand, desperate for one last snatch of melody, holding still against the mounting tempo of the outer world.
The forest song lingers long in my body, though my ears cannot hear, cannot re-enter its rhythms and childlike dances. Yet underneath everything, I still make out the quiet regularity of breath, pulse and foot upon firm ground. Within me resounds the enduring harmony of this place; that limitless music without resolution which has welcomed another voice within its ageless composition.
(With apologies to anyone who actually knows musical terms! Ed.)
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SPEAK OUT! SPEAK LOUD! The Parliament of Owls by David Henzell
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