What Five Minutes of Rain Taught Me About the Sounds We’ve Forgotten
Developing a listening practice reminded me why I changed my Camino route
This morning, I stood on my front deck in light rain and listened.
Just listened. For five minutes. While watering the plants in boxes that the rain couldn’t reach, I stopped trying to accomplish anything and received what the world was offering. Light rain on wood, birds chirping despite the weather, a V formation of geese honking through seasonal migration, and the gentle trickle of water down the front ditch.
It was surprisingly peaceful.
I felt grateful for the new deck beneath my feet. The old one, with its weathered paint and wobbly railing, would have distracted me. I would have been thinking about safety instead of presence. Sometimes we need to repair what’s broken before we can hear what’s speaking. The rain felt like a gift after months of drought. I could listen to the Earth receiving it.
These are my thoughts from Day 2 of a 113-Day EcoSpirituality Challenge I am leading for one of my communities.
What I Learned on My Fifth Camino Walk
As an ordained Wild Guide who’s walked the Camino five times, I’ve learned something most guidebooks don’t mention: you can’t hear nature when you’re surrounded by crowds.
On my first walk, I kept waiting for the profound silence everyone writes about. Instead, I heard constant talking, groups singing, and people on phones. I finally realized this would not work when a group of high school teens walked by, and one had a boom box.
Seriously, a boom box on the Camino?
I realized I couldn’t change other people, so I changed routes. By my fifth walk, I’d chosen paths where I could hear running water instead of running commentary, where bird calls weren’t drowned out by conversation, where the sound of my own footsteps on ancient stones could actually teach me something.
I remember stopping countless times just to listen to water running naturally through the countryside.
Each time, I’d say a quiet prayer to the water goddesses I acknowledge when clean water flows freely. Not because the ritual mattered, but because stopping to listen mattered. The sound connected me to something larger than my walking.
The natural world was speaking all along.
The Irony We Don’t Notice
Here’s what amazes me as I reflect on our 13-Day EcoSpirituality Challenge. Today's focus is on what we hear when we slow ourselves down to listen. We’re so bombarded by noise that we buy sound machines to help us sleep.
Think about that for a moment. We’ve drowned out the natural world so completely that we need electronic devices to play recordings of rain, streams, and wind to help us rest. The irony is profound; we need nature sounds to relax because we’ve eliminated actual nature from our soundscape.
When I lead walking groups, I watch this pattern repeat.
People carry phones playing meditation apps with nature sounds while walking past actual birds, actual wind, and actual rustling leaves. We’re looking for peace in recordings of what’s right in front of us. Listening practice isn’t complicated; it’s just noticing what’s already there.
The sounds we seek are already present.
Walking Changes What You Hear
There’s a rhythm to contemplative walking that opens listening in ways sitting cannot.
When I walk, I move between internal sounds—my own thoughts, reflections, and questions—and external sounds from the world around me. This dance between inner and outer listening is what I’m hoping to create in my September 2026 contemplative walking retreat. Movement changes what you hear. Your footsteps create a baseline rhythm, your breathing deepens, and the changing landscape brings different sounds.
Walking becomes a conversation between your body and the land.
You can’t force this. You can only create conditions for it by slowing down enough to listen. On the Camino, I learned that hearing nature requires choosing it: choosing quieter routes, choosing to stop and listen to running water, choosing to notice the geese overhead instead of staying lost in thought.
The natural world is always speaking.
Teaching Myself Before Teaching Others
As I develop this listening practice for Day 2 of the challenge, I’m again reminded that I can’t encourage active listening in others without first deepening my own practice.
This morning’s rain listening wasn’t just about the challenge participants. It was about priming my own ears, remembering what I’ve forgotten, rediscovering why this practice matters. The subtle, peaceful sounds of the natural world are always available, such as rain, birds, wind, and water trickling. But we’ve trained ourselves to filter them out as background noise while we focus on what seems more urgent.
What if those background sounds are actually the foreground of a life well lived?
Your Practice Today
Here’s what I’m inviting you to try: find five minutes today to just listen.
Go to your sit spot if you have one, or anywhere outside. If getting outside isn’t possible, open a window. Close your eyes if that feels comfortable. Don’t try to name or identify everything; just receive the sounds.
Wind, birds, insects, traffic, rustling leaves, your own breath, rain if you’re lucky.
Let the world sing to you without analyzing the song. Notice what you usually filter out: the quietest sounds, the most distant sounds, the sounds closest to your body. I have had people share they heard a mockingbird they’d been filtering out for weeks; another noticed their own breath was louder than the wind; someone else realized they’d been so focused on visual beauty that they’d forgotten their ears entirely.
This is what happens when we practice listening.
The natural world stops being scenery and becomes relationship. We stop being observers and become participants. We remember we’re not separate from nature; we’re part of its soundscape.
The Earth has been speaking all along.
What’s Coming
Over the next days, we’ll build on this listening practice.
Tomorrow, we follow water. But that practice will be richer because today you learned to listen. For now, five minutes is enough: find a place, close your eyes, receive what’s offered.
The Earth is speaking.
I’m developing a 13-Day EcoSpirituality Challenge and sharing what I’m learning here. Tomorrow: following water. If you’d like to practice along, consider subscribing for weekly reflections on EcoSpirituality, sacred walking, and reclaiming rest in a culture of urgency.
What did you hear today that surprised you? I’d love to know in the comments below.