Are you constantly recalibrating your nervous system from the barrage of the news cycle and ensuing soup of emotions: anger, disbelief, grief, loss, and frustration? Here is a piece of good news. It’s a moment in history, a sacred pause, coined by scientists as the “Anthropause” – the wave of quiet.
Do you remember in the first few days of pandemic lockdown how eerily quiet the world became? An exquisite peacefulness descended in which bird calls, the sounds of the bush, trees, our own breathing could be heard for the first time above the reverb of industry, air and road traffic. The sky is a gorgeous blue and people in India are seeing the Himalayas for the first time.
The wave of quiet has been studied scientifically. The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in the longest and most pronounced reduction in human-linked seismic vibrations of the earth ever recorded. Finally the earth can breathe again.
The study results were released at the end of July in Science and documented more than 268 seismic stations in 117 countries between March and May 2020, finding an up to 50% reduction in seismic noise from humans coinciding with lockdown. The largest drops were seen in densely populated areas like New York City. Reduced rumblings were even recorded deep underground in the Black Forest.
“Our study uniquely highlights just how much human activities impact the solid Earth, and could let us see more clearly than ever what differentiates human and natural noise.” Seismologist Stephen Hicks of Imperial College London in the UK.
I could hear myself sighing with relief when a friend told me this recently. Maybe now we could listen better to the Earth and understand her natural signals that we would otherwise have missed, drowned out by the sounds of human activity.
We are being asked to tread gently in the more-than-human world. Listen to trees whisper, their vibration and communication taking much longer than other living things. This devastating trifecta of 2020 Year of Fire, Pandemic and Uprising is really settling in for the long haul and we are asked to bear witness to universal and personal losses big and small. We are all indigenous to the Earth – some through lineage and others through ancestry. Let’s learn from each other: how to belong, connect and take care of Mother Earth.
Listen
I can see from where I am standing at one end of the deserted beach
a creature has washed up.
I walk towards it and as
I get closer I see a magnificent tree with limbs akimbo.
As the tide rushes out, I climb aboard
the boat that is setting sail, destined to sink.It’s high tide and the waves rush in under her moist, watery boughs.
I’m moving, I’ve launched into this new life, way out of my depth, it’s frightening
and the tree says, waves rushing out
allow for uncertainty,
allow for things to start and finish,
allow for suffering and don’t be surprised.The next day I come to her
she is marooned, it’s low tide.
Limpets stick to her underbelly
motionless, moored to the sand, full of sadness and longing.The tree says
could you listen?
could you just listen to the gentle tremors of the earth and your human heart?
