Voices of the Earth

It’s a frosty morning on the Spring Equinox, the tipping-point to brighter days. I’m walking to a stone circle at Duddo, in Northumberland, to commune again with the stones. Once through the gate into a field, I walk the mile or so of neat hawthorn hedgerow on my right, the mystery of life in their buds, spent stalks of last year’s crop on my left. For fifteen years or more I’ve walked this grassy track to the Duddo Stones, now just visible on the brow of the hillock a distance away, protruding into the sky.

Skylarks rise twittering. They rise vertically as they sing, float to the ground then rise again, until they are distant voices in the blue. Populations of this resident Red List species are half, compared to twenty-five years ago, a step away from extinction.

I walk the upward path through the barley field until they’re before me, the stones. Like five decaying teeth rooted in the ground, with gaps where two more stones once sat for about 4,000 years, now gone. I’m intrigued that they are also known as the ‘Singing Stones’, ‘the Women’, or the ‘Singing Sisters’ on account of their curvy bodies, some say.

I’ve come to listen to the stones. I want to listen to them sing; to feel their voices ring through me, like ghost voices from the Earth; to tone with something unfathomable within me, with roots in the Earth, the Earth, the Earth.

From here, the wide undulating landscape is open in all directions. No fields are flat, or regular, but form a patchwork against a big sky. Miles of hedgerows waiting to burst into greens. Dark ribbons of pines over there. The blue-grey outline of the Cheviot hills with a dusting of snow in the far distance, wait for the sun to burn away the mist.

The stones are taller than me (just), and wider than my open arms. They glisten where the sun flicks on specs of quartz in the sandstone. Colonies of lichen – green, yellow, grey – pancake their surfaces. Vertical grooves, fissures like valleys, are the marks of centuries of weather.

I’ve come to listen to the stones, but there is no wind for them to sing today. I press my ear against their roughness, but no. I prostrate myself on the damp ground, like a prayer, to listen to the dark underground, but no. I press my body against the stones to sense the slightest tremor, but no.

Then a hawk bullets over me with a whoosh, inches from my ear, hovers for a moment beyond the stones, then vanishes. It’s a moment of awe. There’s a fluster at the base of a stone near my feet. It’s a skylark taking cover. Within two blinks of my eye it rises up, then sinks into the grass over there. Another moment of awe.

Sometimes wild winter winds pass like ghost voices between these stones. I’ve often felt their fingers on my back as I leant against the gusts, poking me to sway, stumble, or fall.

Perhaps these stones are aligned to receive the first or last of the sun’s rays at the solstices, like the henges of Britain and Ireland, or the phases of the mysterious moon. Perhaps they bathe in the light of the moon on a night when the moon illumines the stones like a temple.

I recall the bell-like tones of the ‘ringing stone’ at Ballater, a day’s drive away, just a stepping-stone distance from the Cairngorms. I’ve rung this giant stone with another stone, one spring afternoon a few years ago, like pounding a drum. Ding-ding-ding, ding-ding-ding, for five minutes or more. The tone vibrating in my body through my fingers. I felt like an ancient beater of rock signalling afar. Though not quite SOS in Morse which goes like this:

ding-ding-ding, di-i-i-ing di-i-ing di-i-ing, ding-ding-ding

ding-ding-ding, di-i-i-ing di-i-ing di-i-ing, ding-ding-ding.

Perhaps the Duddo Stones remember this place, the comings and goings of folk through history, and the burials in its centre. Perhaps they sing to themselves when alone, or with the larks. I think they do.

During the first World War, about 200 British Signal Intelligence, were dug in the trenches on the Western Front. Using long wire-based antenna they listened to communications of the enemy. They didn’t know that when picking up signals in thunderstorms in the early mornings, they were not the dawn chorus of birdsong twittering. They were the voice of the Earth, ‘chorus waves’ from the Earth, singing in high hollow whoops, lows and dips, like rainforest birds-of-paradise. When I listened to NASA recordings it was like listening to a secret language.

Surely the Earth is a god whose sixty-two mile atmosphere rests at the Kármán line where space begins. I’ve read that this is within the furthest Van Allen radiation belt, and outside the inner belt which protects the Earth from injurious cosmic rays. The Earth sits in the centre of this doughnut ring. The voice of the Earth goes as far as the Kármán line, at least, or originates from there, or both, then sings within this magnetic, radioactive field. We are in the voice, just as we are in the Earth.

The Earth’s low frequency tone known as the Schumann Resonance, after physicist Winfried Otto Schumann’s discovery of this in 1952, vibrates through us like a tuning fork.

Other planets sing, too. Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Venus, and Neptune sing. Even the moon sings, rings like a bell, and the stars, including the sun sing. The sun emits thousands of simultaneous notes which erupt like boiling bubbles. Other stars sing like tubers, piccolos, and flutes.

Pythagoras was right to believe in the ‘music of the spheres.’ The cosmic song.

III

There’s a gravestone in the River Tweed, on the Scottish side near Coldstream. It’s there in the silty margins with the letters ‘J’, ‘O’, ‘N’ just visible below the ripples. It’s difficult to say for sure.

Above the river, where the bank rises up to about the height of an oak tree, is the graveyard. The edge of this kirkyard has collapsed over the embankment into the river. I’m there again now gazing down at the meditative flow of water, remembering the gravestone.

Among the stones in the kirkyard there are four war graves. The only stone from the first World War is of Private John Wilson who was killed in action on the first day of the Battle of Broodseinde, in Belgium, on 4^th October 1917, when the Flanders drizzle soaked everyone. He was one of 300 British losses, among the thousands of other killings. I’m thinking about those radio signals, as I sit with my back against his bones in a wall of the roofless kirk ruins, and looking at tree-tops – mainly oaks and pines – where osprey will return to nest again this year. Wearied by their journey from West Africa, they will survey the river for trout, salmon, flounder, or maybe also water voles in the margins. Yellow eyes see everything from high up there, even below the murky waterline. Their right eye senses the Earth’s magnetic field for navigation, too, a type of sixth sense, which is both a compass sense (for direction) and a map sense (for location).This sixth sense picks up the low bubbling roar, high creaking tinkles, of the Earth’s magnetic voice.

Even in war the Earth sings.

This kirkyard dates back to the Anglo-Saxons, at least. The guardian yews are the measure of time. I like it for its wildness, completely overgrown. Today everything is coming back to life.

Do gravestones sing? I think they do. Emblems of trumpet blowing angels on billow clouds on stones are a sign. They also sing when the wind cuts edges and curves, slips off marble, drags on sandstone, funnels between stones.

The winds of the Earth sing.

When earthquakes rip through the Earth, they roar, creak, vibrate, and rumble under your feet. The Richter scale is a measure for the power of their voice. So far, the highest known magnitude is 9.5, like the Great Chilean earthquake on 22^nd May 1960 which collapsed everything for miles. It sent 35 foot high tsunamis surging across the oceans for thousands of miles, too. Then there was the quake in Alaska on 27^th March 1964. Measuring 9.2 on the Richter scale, it lasted four-minutes-and thirty-eight seconds. Everything fell into the criss-cross of yawning fissures while the snow lay on mountains, as people knelt in prayer on this Good Friday.

The Earth rings like a bell after a quake. Rings, rings, rings like a temple bell, in overtones, toroidal twists, or spheroidal pulses. Vibrating surface bells, whole body booming bells.

Seismologists think that a single quake of Richter 12 magnitude may split the Earth in two.

I want to listen to the song of the Earth, the voice I was born into. I want to listen through ancient stones with their memory of Earth’s voices. I want to listen to the voice of the Earth in the wind, and in the moving sea.

I want to escape urban noise which assaults my senses and blunts my sensibility to these voices.

Before my time comes, I want to say, at least, that the voice of the Earth rose up through my feet into my body, as the sap rose on a spring day when I stood in the stones, or of the energy of the Earth on the tideline. I want to say yes to this voice, I belong to you. You allow me to stand being myself. Without you, I’ve nowhere to put my feet, to roam, to become who I am.

At the River Tweed estuary the tide surges in under the moonless sky. The dark lighthouse over there at the tip of the elbow pier; no flashing, no fixed light. The voice of the moon, and the voice of the sun, even when invisible, sing together at equinoxes to bring high tides. Their voices resonate with the voice of the Earth as the tide rises.

With my back against the high rockface I listen to the sea.

Waves race towards me with wispy crests, moved by the icy breath of a god. They fall, pause, roll back then race again. They roar, lap, slurp, and gush on the rocks as they come. Then drag the pebbles as they go.

I’ve read that discrete vibrating movements of the Earth’s body like breathing are known as free oscillations. Together with atmospheric shifts, and the power of waves in lightless oceanic depths, cause the Earth to hum. I imagine this now while listening to the sea, my feet listening too, the whole of me listening for vibrations.

There’s movement below the waterline too, just visible in the gloom. Perhaps it’s swaying kelp and wracks, or maybe a fin, jaw, or body.

VII

According to estimates, it would take between 100 to 200 five megaton nuclear bombs to cause catastrophic damage to the Earth. The bomb dropped on Hiroshima, known as Little Boy, was about 0.015 megatons, and the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, known as Fat Man, was 0.021 megatons. A five megaton bomb is over 300 times this.

The USA has about 1000 megatons. Their Castle Bravo bomb, or Bikini snow,on account of its snowflake fall out, is fifteen megatons, with an explosion plume five times higher than Mt. Everest. That’s fewer than Russia who have about 1200 megatons. Their Tsar Bomba, meaning Emperor of Bombs, is fifty megatons, with a plume ten times higher than Mt. Everest.

The Tibetan name for this mountain, Qomolangma, means Goddess of the Valley or Goddess Mother of Creation. At night when temperatures drop, this mountain sings in bursts, pops, and booms.

We have the capacity to split the Earth in two, but we won’t kill its song.

After the last bomb falls, the Earth will sing.

When most of nature is gone, the Earth will sing.

Without us, the Earth will sing.

The voices of the Earth are like the fluting voices of birds-of paradise.

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