Baseline

Recently I’ve been reading a lot of nature books—field guides, essays, books on tracking skills and animal behavior—and the birds in particular have piqued my interest. Maybe it’s just that I’m sick of the crows lunching on the suet in the feeder or just wondering where the little robins are. But in my brief stint as an armchair naturalist (I’ll go out when little Jack Frost has been minced by the rototiller) I’ve discovered that there’s some striking similarities between the feathered folk and my own home-grown, two-legged fauna.

If you walk towards the woods on a balmy, spring day, you’ll hear the din of birds chattering in the green enclosure of the trees. Maybe they’re comparing worms, complaining about their mates, or talking to their eggs. Maybe they’re just singing for the sheer joy of being alive. But as you walk into the forest, as they hear you, suddenly their sounds change—some birds hush in fear, some squawk a warning, some stake their territory. If you sit down and wait quietly, the birds forget about you and resume what they were doing. This activity, this sound of normalcy, is called baseline. Even if you can’t recognize any individual bird’s song, you can sense that the birds are happily returning to their ordinary business.

At my house, Monday, Wednesday and Fridays are our busy days, when we’re out to various classes and cooperatives. Tuesdays and Thursdays we stay home, and here’s why: we can get our work done and then get to the even more important work of winding down to baseline. It takes a good few hours of “free” time for us to relax and go about our lives as if…as if we were just living. We have a snack because we’re hungry. We read books together because the books are there and everyone’s eager to snuggle on the couch. The kids get past bickering and play so happily with each other that I can sit down and write an essay (so far so good). What does this sound like? Beautiful background noise – no screaming, unexplained water or appliance activity, nagging, stomping, complaining, nothing.

What strikes me is how infrequently we get to hear this noise in our own homes. Most of the time, in our culture, we’re rushing from place to place, yelling at our kids to hurry up or blaspheming anything that will listen over lost socks and missing homework. We’re tired, we’re hungry, we’re stressed, and we’ve always got some place else to go. If we sat and listened (which we don’t, because the dog needs to go out and someone needs to be wiped), then what we’d hear is the sound of alarm, of unnaturally elevated activity that most animals can only keep up for a short time. It’s almost like there’s a big, honking predator at the door.

We need our big chunks of time at home, and I’m firmly convinced that this is one of the best things I can give to my children. It’s taken me a few years to realize just how much “baseline” time we need in order to not feel stressed out all the time. I also know how easy it is to feel that rushed, utilitarian crankiness is “normal” and how hard it’s been for me to protect this refuge of quiet in our lives. So tonight, I’ll sit here and enjoy the sound of the heater and the bustle of the gnome city being built in the playroom (complete with recycling center). We’ll have a quiet dinner together, read more stories and watch the laundry not fold itself. Tomorrow, we’ll go out.