The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #23861 Message #920194
Posted By: Stubs
27-Mar-03 - 10:11 PM
Thread Name: Singing in Scenic Outdoors
Subject: RE: Singing in Scenic Outdoors
Many years ago while working in the Canadian bush as a surveyor I had an almost haunting musical experience. A large tract of bush-land was being divided into lots. The job lasted throughout an entire summer as each line had to be cut out. When the chain saws weren't howling the only sounds were ones of nature. One day one of our crew claimed to hear distant singing. The rest of us strained but only heard the sound of birds singing, frogs chirping, and small scurryings through the leaves. Later in the day he made another claim to have heard this mysterious melody, and was met with our own song of laughter and teasing about forest spirits.
The next day we all heard it:quiet, nearly whispering, a wordless, nearly imaginary sound that was all but indistinguishable from the breeze in the trees. It was gone in a moment. We returned to our work in a subdued frame of mind. The nearest house was about a mile away, the next one a half mile or so beyond that. Who could it be?
We had other jobs to attend and did not return to that site daily, but every time that we did the singing could be heard through the trees. This went on for weeks,usually a far away and on-the-wind sound, but was occasionally a little less distant. Our discussions about it included all kinds of imaginings.
Eventually the singing was close enough to actually be recognised as a nearby human voice, although never were individual words made out. It seemed feminine, and somehow elfin. Each day it came a little closer. We found ourselves looking for its creator. Finally we saw someone, a shape running through the forest and gone again. This was to repeat itself over the nest few days.
About that time we met a boy. He was thirteen or so and began following us about one day as we worked, soon exercising his curiosity with multitudes of questions. From the nearest forest home, the best description of him is "hillbilly-ish". Shirtless and barefoot, he could run through the trees like a deer.He was present when we next heard the mysterious songstress.
At our enquiries, he responded ,"That's Angie. She's my sister: there she is" and he pointed into the sun speckled underbrush, thick where no trees grew on the rocky soil. A flash of green and white sprang from the spot and disappeared, as did the arboreal music. We would never have glimpsed her on our own.
Eventually, over days and with her brother's urgings, without forgoing her serenades, Angie came forth from the forest to meet us. About two years younger than her brother, she was indeed a forest sprite, tiny and blonde, pretty as the butterflies she seemed to imitate as she flitted through the trees. She shyly explained that she loved to sing, but only to herself. She made up her own songs, inventing meanigless words and sang them to the trees. Someday she might get a guitar. Someday she might sing on stage. The poverty of the district needed some dreams, some hope of elswhere. Someday.
Angie sang near to us more often after that and often within view. She would sing standing atop a low ridge or sitting on the rail fence that snaked along the back-woods road that led past her ramshackle house down to the lake whose precious waterfronts we were severing. She would sing from her heart and her dreams to the forest. Perhaps she sings there still. Perhaps her children do. If perhaps she sings to a human audience, I'm sure they are as haunted in their arm chairs or their auditorium as I was in the forest. I wonder if they are also as pleasantly haunted in their dreams?