Peace in Wild Places

BirdNote^®
Finding Peace in Wild Places
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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Senior Producer: Mark Bramhill
Producer: Sam Johnson
Managing Producer: Jazzi Johnson
Managing Producer: Ariana Remmel
Content Director: Jonese Franklin

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.
© 2011 BirdNote   May 2018 / January 2026     
Narrator: Michael Stein

ID# berryw-01b-2018-05-31   berryw-01b

Reference: “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.