Psithurism: The sound of wind whispering through the trees.
We can’t see wind, only the things it moves. Likewise, we can’t hear wind unless it’s flowing past something that makes it vibrate; this causes it to adopt various sonic guises depending on what it interacts with. Trees provide some of the most common and admired ways for wind to make itself heard. This sound has been termed psithurism (sith-err-iz-um).
The naturalist author and founding member of the RSPB, W.H. Hudson, suggests in Birds and Man (1901), that psithurism is salubrious. He describes the sound of wind in the trees as “very restorative” – a mysterious voice which the forest speaks to us, and that to lie or sit thus for an hour at a time listening to the wind is an experience worth going far to seek.
The sonic qualities of psithurism seem to smudge the border between music and noise. The American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) described the sound in “A Day of Sunshine”:
“I hear the wind among the trees
Playing celestial symphonies;
I see the branches downward bent,
Like keys of some great instrument.
Psithurism: The sound of wind whispering through the trees.
We can’t see wind, only the things it moves. Likewise, we can’t hear wind unless it’s flowing past something that makes it vibrate; this causes it to adopt various sonic guises depending on what it interacts with. Trees provide some of the most common and admired ways for wind to make itself heard. This sound has been termed psithurism (sith-err-iz-um).
The naturalist author and founding member of the RSPB, W.H. Hudson, suggests in Birds and Man (1901), that psithurism is salubrious. He describes the sound of wind in the trees as “very restorative” – a mysterious voice which the forest speaks to us, and that to lie or sit thus for an hour at a time listening to the wind is an experience worth going far to seek.
The sonic qualities of psithurism seem to smudge the border between music and noise. The American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) described the sound in “A Day of Sunshine”:
“I hear the wind among the trees
Playing celestial symphonies;
I see the branches downward bent,
Like keys of some great instrument.