Murmurations
Murmurations was an attempt to try to become more mindful of everyday wildness, to force myself to take notice as to how the seasons, the elements, the plants and animals and trees I observed in various urban and wilderness settings changed over time – how they thrived, lived, died, went through rebirth and transformation. I also wanted to see how my own mental and emotional landscapes were affected by what was around me, to track the course of that entwined relationship.
Every day for 365 days, I wrote one sentence describing my experiences with nature and one sentence journaling about my inner and outer life. By doing this, I’d hoped to chart a narrative of the year and be dazzled by how often the two sentences felt in sync with each other.
What I found instead was a kind of organized chaos filled with frequent surprises. Nearly every day held some kind of delight, an invaluable gift that invited me to stop and take just a moment to connect. Every time I did connect, I lifted myself out my struggles. Every time daily life took over and I refused that invitation, I spiraled back into those struggles. There was very little correlation, only a very clear message as to the importance of nature in our lives.
I left the project with newfound appreciation and respect for the wild places that has since changed me and reshaped my daily practice. I revisited the project in 2026 and it appears here in its entirety with only light editing around the edges.
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Murmuration 12.27.2017
As the blood spilled, I walked into the cold, intensely aware of every bird sheltered in every hollow, of each winter leaf and berry, of the impermanence of the wind, of the sleep of trees, of the lingering ice and the insubstantiality of warm breath, in shock by my injury and yet attuned perfectly to everything around me. I required three stitches for my jagged cut of my index finger from a cheese knife and was lucky not to have hit either muscle or nerve.
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Murmuration 12.28.2017
The yellow tree denies the turn of the season and holds fast to a single cluster of fluttering leaves, while beyond it the red winter berries hang like blood drops, full and fat along my path, and I feel at once the tenderness and resilience of life. I visited the doctor today for a tetanus shot and hope that I can regain some semblance of normality over the upcoming long weekend.
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Murmuration 12.29.2017
Tonight the wind came like ocean waves birthed from some hidden mountain cove to crash upon our frosted windows, and in the darkness I imagined the ghost fish caught in the currents, the rudderless ships of thought and memory sailing those ethereal seas, and the echoes of love and loss left behind as the storm retreated. The start of the next four day weekend is bittersweet, full of the promise of relaxation but heavy with the all that is waiting on the other side of this watershed.
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Murmuration 12.30.2017
As the sun appeared, the world filled with bird song, not the trilled, entwined melodies of the spring chorus, but an off-kilter symphony of chattering, chirping and whistling as the neighborhood robins met a family of starlings and a troop of bush tits to celebrate the mild winter. Today was a mixed kind of day, a lost day to my thoughts and fears, but a positive day of laughter and relationship as well.
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Murmuration 12.31.2017
With the frost kissing my upturned face, I took the last walk of the year in my favorite forest, listening to the trees whisper and creak in a language lost to us, watching the sunlight filter through the soft pine needles and cast its dancing shadows on the cold-packed earth, and as I stood gazing at the snow peaks that reflected across the sound, the strands of bare branches waved like a field of wheat and everything was cast in gold, my heart full of the beauty of nature, my spirit home in the sacred, quiet places of wood and water and wind. And so I reach the end of this experience and as the year is packed away in boxes, and the wheel begins to turn anew, I wish you all a Happy New Year.