Sitting
by the river a few minutes after sunrise. There's a "gently
overwhelming" load of sights and sounds.
Start
by tuning it down to one thing: the tree across the river.
Glistening
with early spring light green, backlit by morning sun, the tree stands out as
it shimmers in the light breeze. Hold that picture and look closer, see the
brush above the water close by and how the leaves are lit both by the sun
slowly rising and by the reflection from the river right below.
They give off a bright light as the wind stirs the water's surface, reflecting
ripples rise and intertwine with the breeze, dappled light and gentle swaying.
Then
turn off all the sounds.
No
breeze through the trees. No slight groans of centuries-old limbs bending.
Take
all of the dozen or more bird sounds -- low rolling dove calls, twitters and
tweets of the finches and grackles, warbles of the wrens, and cackles of the
red-winged blackbirds -- and pay attention to JUST ONE.
After
listening to a series of trills, add back in the songbirds' melodies. Enjoy
that and then recognize the sound of a car on Route 4 (that traces the original
Champlain Canal, across the river) as it approaches and fades away.
I
tried that exercise and could get to only about two images and three -- maybe four
-- discrete sounds before the environment just cascaded back together again,
really a cliché of "symphony of sight and sound":
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