The Enchantress of the Woods

a song that casts the spell of spring

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Soft light filters through the early morning mist. The sun’s rays gently penetrate the spaces between tender new leaves and still bare branches. The dampness of night gives way to the sweet, moist fragrance of spring soil. Shadows linger among boulders that rest on the woodland floor. The moss that covers them is deep green, lush and velvety. Dew droplets cling to drooping foliage and bejewel blades of grass.

Sheets of gauzy mist rise from the pond and disperse into the margins of the wetlands. Wood ducks silently paddle their way out of the cattails and into the hazy light of the morning sun scattering across the still water. Their wake streams out behind them in ever-widening v’s. Their call (not a quack) is eerie and plaintive and echoes slightly as it travels southward along the pond bouncing back off the small rocky wooded hills flanking the water.

Trillium, Merrybells, and Canada Mayflower dot the ground. In patches here and there, nestled between the roots of trees, mushrooms blossom burgeoning from the thick, fertile leaf litter that has been decomposing since last autumn.

In the light, you can feel the energy of the sun warming everything it touches. The meadow has only pushed a few inches out of the earth. Grasses and wildflowers are tiny green shoots just emerging, encouraged to do so by the heat that is beginning to energize the bare ground.

The maple tree flowers are droopy and red, the crab apple buds are shell-pink, and the witch alder is fuzzy and plump.

Birdsong begins all around. They sing for mates, to mark territory, but most of all, I believe they sing for joy. Some have survived another winter, and others have returned to their summer homes after thousands of miles of migration. They celebrate life with their songs.

Standing on the earth with bare feet and absorbing the rising energy, inhaling the soothing moist air, and enjoying the warmth of the sun as it makes its way above the tree tops is a spring ritual I enjoy many times over in May. It’s beautiful and healing and imparts hope and health to all parts of me. It’s the experience of earthly reality, realness, a potent antidote to the virtual, artificial, and contrived world of the computer screen.

I sit on a large boulder at the edge of the woods; it’s rounded from millennia of erosion, and glittering veins of quartz crisscross its surface. It feels cool on the shaded side towards the trees but warm and inviting on its south side as the morning sun creeps along its form.

Sitting quietly, my mind wanders, and my body relaxes. The woods are waking up. Chipmunks are scurrying along the rocky ground, and squirrels are busy above in the canopy, rustling branches as they leap from one tree to the next.

Gradually the sensation comes over me of entering into a waking dream. Colors intensify. The fragrance of the woods becomes an intoxicating perfume.

Just as Lucy while in Narnia succumbs to Mr. Tumnus’ flute, I slip into another world as the song of the unassuming Wood Thrush lulls me with its enchanting melody. And like Lucy, the Wood Thrush’s Pan Pipe song opens my eyes to the reality around me.

The enchanting song of the Wood Thrush has been known for centuries as a song that brings peace, healing and hope to the soul. The Wood Thrush learns its song from other Wood Thrushes, and males have over fifty songs to sing. One of its most amazing talents is being able to sing two different notes simultaneously, in harmony. The liquid, flute-like voice of the Wood Thrush is a marvel. Charles Hartshorne in Born to Sing writes, “the Thrush song has been called a “musical microcosm of notes sounded simultaneously and judged the highest summit in the evolution of animal music so far known to us”.

Perhaps as much as any man, Henry David Thoreau enjoyed his walks in the woods. In June 1853, Thoreau wrote in his journal of an enchanting encounter with the Wood Thrush:

 “The wood thrush launches forth his evening strains from the midst of the pines. I admire the moderation of this master. There is nothing tumultuous in his song. He launches forth one strain with all his heart and life and soul, of pure and unmatchable melody, and then he pauses and gives the hearer and himself time to digest this, and then another and another … ”

About a week later, Thoreau wrote again of the Wood Thrush: “This is the only bird whose note affects me like music … It lifts and exhilarates me. It is inspiring . . . It changes all hours to an eternal morning.” ~ Michael Stein

From the words of Thoreau’s Journals in 1852,

“The thrush alone declares the immortal wealth and vigor that is in the forest.  Here is a bird in whose strain the story is told … whenever a man hears it, it is a new world and a free country, and the gates of heaven are not shut against him.”

The video above gives only the merest sample of the beauty of the Wood Thrush’s song. I learned it as rav-i-o-lee (last syllable rising), rav-i-o-lay (last syllable descending). That is the middle part of the song and the most recognizable.

Regardless of the specifics of how you remember and recognize the song it’s the effect of the song that is most interesting.

I find it mesmerizing and with the power to allow me to see beyond ordinary surface reality to the aliveness and connectedness of all things. A shimmer of light, color and energy is revealed accompanied by a transcendent sensation of goodness, harmony and oneness. This is when I most want to feel the soles of my bare feet upon the earth, to place the palms of my hands on the stones and wrap my arms around the rough trunk of a tree. It’s when birds and animals come close and the plants in my garden lean towards me as I walk along the garden path. It’s the moment I speak the language of the birds.

In Abrahamic and European mythology, medieval literature and occultism, the language of the birds is postulated as a mystical, perfect divine language, Adamic language, Enochian, angelic language or a mythical or magical language used by birds to communicate with the initiated. ~ Wikipedia

Thoreau says that when the Wood Thrush sings the gates of heaven are not shut, how right he is.

When I am transported by the song of the Wood Thrush I speak to the flower faeries, and the garden gnomes, and to Alva the genius loci who presides over my property and also to the spirit of the pond, a water spirit ancient and sleepy who rises and falls, easily adapting to weather, beavers, muskrats and even the careless intervention of humans.

So it is that the Wood Thrush is the enchantress of the woods, able to cast a spell of spring that makes the barriers between realms more permeable so I can once again commune with the nature spirits as I once easily did as a child.

There is no doubt that each season holds its own magic. But spring as the season of renewal and new life seems to hold a special invitation, a special magic that invites us to once again acquaint ourselves with those in the unseen realms.

It is not foolishness but wisdom that draws us in and offers deeper connection and understanding of what is real and what is artifice.

The Wood Thrush knows, do you?

It’s not often we have an opportunity to share our unusual, and super-natural experiences with the spirit realm of nature. You are invited to tell your stories in the comments.

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