Peace in Wild Places

BirdNote^®

Finding Peace in Wild Places
A Tribute to Wendell Berry

Written by Chris Peterson

This is BirdNote!
[Trickle of stream in Robinson Canyon with crickets]
Let’s listen to the words of nature poet Wendell Berry in his poem entitled,
 “The Peace of Wild Things”
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
[The stream in Robinson Canyon]
Where do you go to rest and renew yourself in nature? Where do you come into the peace of wild things?
 [Long sound break, the stream in Robinson Canyon]
For BirdNote, I’m Michael Stein.

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 “The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry, from The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry,
ISBN 1582430373 Permission for use granted by Perseus Books Group .  Calls of the Great Horned Owl provided by The Macaulay Library at Cornell Lab of Ornithology, recorded by W.R. Fish
Ambient sound, Robinson Canyon, Washington, recorded by C. Peterson
Producer: John Kessler
Executive Producer: Chris Peterson
© 2011 Tune In to Nature.org      May 2018     Narrator: Michael Stein

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