Ok, I admit it, I’m a basket case. But that doesn’t mean I’m no fun!

Spring is upon us and I am about to take off for the Smoky Mountains and other destinations. I would very much like you to follow my adventures by checking out my Facebook posts.

Originally, I had intended to post about my trip on my Facebook “business page.” But I’ve recently changed my mind in favor of posting to my “personal profile.” This is because Facebook doesn’t allow me to post simple video-podcasts to my page using my new iPhone, even though it easy to do (almost trivial, in fact) if I post to my profile.

Therefore, I invite all of you good and faithful musicofnature.org blog followers to become my Facebook friends so you can follow me as I gallivant around in nature’s primordial soup. If you’re not already my friend, please visit me on Facebook and send me a friend request. Unless you have a very bad reputation, I am sure to oblige:

Lang Elliott’s Facebook Profile

Note too that I intend to keep a google map of my journeys that will be visible on the home page of the musicofnature.org web site (ironically, I can’t find a way to post that map on my Facebook personal profile, though it is easy to post on my Facebook business page).

Sooner or later, Facebook will come around and give me all the business page features I need, including the ability to automatically post videos from my iPhone. When that finally happens, I will shift the action to my business page and ask all my Facebook friends to move from my profile to my page, where you will no doubt “Like” me for all the bad jokes I’ve told, for all my horsing around, and for the little bits of wisdom that I inadvertently let fall.

the wonders have surely begun.

tonight, i hear woodcocks twittering
and whimpering above the field.

a lone spring peeper piping weakly
at pond’s edge.

a screech-owl trilling softly
from forest next to my friend’s house.

nocturnal magic, purely felt and smelled.

at dusk, i had noticed a robin alarming;
me-wonders now if he had seen the little owl,
peering from a tree hollow, anticipating
sweet moist darkness.

I just re-read a brilliant and illuminating essay entitled “The Music of the Spheres,” by Sufi master Hazrat Inayat Kahn (1882-1927). It is wonderfully written and resonates within me at the deepest levels. I believe everyone who loves nature and life should read it. Here is a passage that is particularly relevant to my life’s work:

“What appeals to us in being near to nature is nature’s music, and nature’s music is more perfect than that of art. It gives us a sense of exaltation to be moving about in the woods, to be looking at the green, to be standing near the running water which has its rhythm, its tone and its harmony. The swinging of the branches in the forest, the rising and falling of the waves—all has its music. Once we contemplate and become one with nature, our hearts open to its music. We say: “I enjoy nature,” and what is it in nature that we enjoy? It is its music. Something in us has been touched by the rhythmic movement, by the perfect harmony which is so seldom found in this artificial life of ours. It lifts one up and makes one feel that it is this which is the real temple, the true religion. One moment standing the midst of nature with open heart is a whole lifetime, if one is in tune with nature.”

Read the entire essay here (and view some beautiful wildflower photos as well, with a gentle babbling brook and musical songbirds sounding off in the background).

To learn more about Hazrat Inayat Kahn and the Sufi movement, check out the following web pages:

Wikipedia Article about Hazrat Inayat Kahn
International Sufi Movement
Wikipedia Article about Sufism

Great news! Garth McElroy of central Maine is joining our team! He is a professional bird photographer and his web site is featheredfotos.com. Check it out—His photos are incredible!

Armed with a Canon 7D, Garth began shooting high definition video this season. He has already snagged a number of great videos. We’ve been working together on creating artful species-portraits and Garth is coming up to speed quickly. Later today he will be posting a superb video-and-sound portrait of the Hermit Thrush. I am quite impressed by his work and look forward to many postings by this talented young artist. I predict he will quickly rise to the top of the game when it comes to high definition bird videography with sound.

Some of you may be wondering who Lang Elliott is. Well . . . this photo by field assistant Beth Bannister pretty much says it all:

click photo to see larger version

Hey there everyone! I have no idea how many folks are following my blog (a few or a dozen or more?), but I need to explain why I haven’t been posting videos over the past few days.

The reason? I haven’t had enough time to do the editing and uploading to YouTube.

I’m in the Smoky Mountains and I’ve collected some very nice footage of several species of trilliums, a violet or two, squirrel corn, redbud, a slug, a giant red mite, plus more. The weather has been “too good,” meaning sunny and dry. I pray for some rain, or at least a good bit of morning dew. Tomorrow I will work on Spring Beauty, Dutchman’s Breeches, and whatever else I find.

Sorry that I haven’t posted videos, but maybe sometime soon I’ll be able to do that. If I get a nasty windy, rainy day, I’ll work all day and share with you some of my nicer stuff. Until then, enjoy this shot (video frame grab) of a backlit red maple samara taken just before sundown. Lovely background, don’t you think?

The Society of Aspiring Poets

I have decided to join the ranks of the aspiring poets, to become a member of their society in hopes of I’m not sure what. We are quite a club—we all live together in a tight cluster of white houses, glued together and planted on the side of a hill. And from the safety of our comfortable dwellings, we spin poetry as wonderful and varied as our nests, and we wonder why the world responds with a “ho” and a “hum.”

Click the photo below to see what it really means to “be different.”

Hi folks! This is my first on-the-road blog entry for my journey, a “poetigraph” that I wrote as I rolled southward through the Shenandoah Valley, moving into the explosion of spring.

What is a “poetigraph”? It is an unrefined poem trapped in paragraph form.

Forever Spring

I love spring with every fiber of my being, deliriously, even fiercely . . . a love that never dies. I am “spring-centric,” meaning that my whole year, including all it’s varied seasons, are but manifestations of one divine process, SPRING, the great birthing of nature that never ends.

Summer is spring’s time to wind down and show off the fruits of its labors. Autumn marks a new beginning, the first frosts coinciding with the formation of leaf buds on trees, intimations of explosive unfoldings still a half-year away. And winter is but the calm before the storm, the wild creative storm that I love so much.

Ask any Great-Horned Owl hooting on a frigid winter night: “Has not Spring yet begun?”

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In just a few days, I will leave my home in Ithaca, New York, and travel south to Tennessee, the first leg of a five month journey. I will begin by exploring the foothills of the Appalachians, in search of colorful wildflower blooms and relaxing dawn choruses of birds. From there I will travel westward to the Ozark Mountains of Missouri and then northward to Canada’s boreal forest, with frogs and birds primarily on my mind. Then, as summer unfolds, my focus will shift to insects, and my travels will take me to destinations yet unknown.

My goal is to immerse myself in nature as I never have before—to rest in nature’s heart, so to speak—and then reflect back my impressions. The musicofnature.org blog will act as my canvas, allowing me to share my experiences through a variety of media, including photography, video, sound recording, and printed or spoken word.

This will hopefullty be a poetic journey, intensely personal, and quite unlike any of the dozens of expeditions I have undertaken over the years. If all goes, well, I hope to fall upon my knees into the dirt of life, delighting in discovery, like a child at play in the garden. I propose to enjoy nature for the sheer pleasure of it. My messages will be brief and poignant (hopefully), like nature haiku—artful distillations, firmly rooted in place and time, yet transcendent in that art acquires a life of its own.

My journey is not about teaching natural history. It is not about conveying factual information. Rather, it is about witnessing, celebrating, and singing praise to the wildness that surrounds me. It is about opening my heart to the heart of nature. It is about resting quietly in a wordless space of joy and appreciation, and then, when I feel inspired, dancing upon the canvas and leaving footprints for all to see and hear.

Granted, my plan is a bit daunting. The technical challenges alone are intimidating. Will I actually have time to edit videos and sound recordings while on-the-road, and also find time to post them on the internet? Maybe this too much to ask of myself, given that expeditions of the past have always been fraught with trials and tribulations of one sort or the other. But I am not one to be deterred. I feel deeply compelled to dance this dance, so why not do it as best I can, and see where it leads? It is in the “doing of it” that an unforeseen result will take shape.

Life is so utterly short that it seems insane
not to respond to the promptings of the heart.