The Rise of Listening

By David Rothenberg, Safina Center Fellow

A month after being told we were not supposed to go anywhere I decided to leave the house. Was it an essential trip? Was my journey really necessary? I walked through the woods to a marshy pond whose name I had never looked up. It turned out the place is called Hidden Lake. It is not so hard to find.

The woods were silent, the lake was basking in the springtime sun. Newts were thrashing in the water getting in fights. Some strange water bugs propelled themselves backwards, their arms rowing like boats.

Water boatmen! Corixidae. A famous bug. Famous because they are among the loudest of all tiny critters. Some of their kind can be as loud as a whale. And they make all this sound by vibrating their penises underwater.

A water boatman in Hidden Lake. Photo: David Rothenberg

Now that’s the kind of nature story that quickly goes viral, you may have heard it before. But have you heard the sound?

Keep in mind that all above the pond was nearly complete silence. No airplanes. No cars. No birds, even no frogs.

But when I played this underwater sound through some speakers into the silent air, the frogs got excited. They started to join in. I was concocting an interspecies music from beneath the surface to high in the trees.

Singing water boatman bugs in Hidden Lake. Photo: David Rothenberg

Two water boatman bugs here. At least. Maybe three. Singing for the usual reasons animals sing. To find a mate. Using the only music they know.

This underwater species we know, if only because its story is so extraordinary. But this is a rarity—90% of the sounds that can commonly be heard in a springtime pond, energized by the sun, remain unknown even to science.

Hidden Lake. Photo: David Rothenberg

That’s right, just up the trail, in the woods, are sounds no one can explain. No one has bothered to take the time to listen. 

Like this one. Bug, or plant, animal or vegetable?

I played this one for the experts, and they had no idea. One said: “All right, now you go figure it out.”

I can’t travel anywhere far, as much as I’d like to. Turns out there are deep sonic mysteries right in our backyards. And this is a great time to listen. 

What does it mean to listen? It’s not the same as hearing. It takes time and attention. You must wait, patiently. It’s possible there will be no sound beneath the surface for ten minutes, twenty, nearly an hour.

But then a surprise will emerge. Nature waits for no one, you must wait for it. Then you learn too be able to take it in, without always needing to name it.

First it is imperative to take in the sound. To spend time with it, feel it, imagine how significant it might be, to the beings evolved to notice and to use it.

For us, on the other hand, it can be mysterious, or beautiful, or both. Try to hold on to the mystery and the beauty at once. See if you can carry that beauty with you home into the silence above the surface.

Then you might have learned some new music. Then you might find the courage to go on, living and playing in this ultimately uncertain time.