Can you hear something out there?

I am sitting here with a quite lively breeze questing through the trees just outside. The garden seems to in a noisy mood today and its given me a sense of communicating out there. And this speech brings to my mind an experience I had the other day with, Anay, my 18 month-old nephew that might tickle you....

My nephew's voice is beginning to discover him at the moment and when the moods strikes, he practices making noises, babbling, languaging. On this early summer morning, whilst he was sat in my lap, I heard a delightful sound coming from him. He was repeating the noise over and over again and sensed he was getting deep pleasure in explore the various inflections and variations he could put into this one word. Each time, the same phrase, and each time, a slightly different sound.

I listened for a while, trying to figure out what word he was trying to express but couldn't quite get him. Then I just found myself repeating and discovering a pleasure in making this sound. We entered into a conversation as I walked around the house with him.

I then decided to step outside with him. There we continued making the noise together and we both became louder in our calls. And as we became bolder, I was gifted a moment of grace.

Standing there under a vaulting blue roof and framed by leaf-laden trees, a third voice joined in our dialogue. I gasped in joy as the noise Anay was making made absolute and complete sense. My nephew had not been copying a gujarati word he'd been hearing inside the house. No. He'd been mimicking the sound of a bird outside his bedroom window and what I had been hearing was a fragment of his conversation with those light wonders.

In that moment, I saw that an idea that we humans talk and the rest of the planet makes noises is just a little more than hubristic. I saw also how our own communication has its deepest roots in our relationship with such more-than-human language. From where else would our language come, if not from the birds and trees alongside whom we grew up?

We carried on for a few moments - the three of us chatting away - and then I returned inside feeling rather honoured for receiving this unexpected gift - a chance to hear the sounds of river, breeze and caw whilst talking about tea and toast at the breakfast table.