Listening to a deeper way

From "Walking" by Linda Hogan (from Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Living World):

"John Hay, in The Immortal Wilderness, has written: 'There are occasions when you can hear the mysterious language of the Earth, in water, or coming through the trees, emanating from the mosses, seeping through the undercurrents of the soil, but you have to be willing to wait and receive.'

"Sometimes I hear it talking. The light of the sunflower was one
language, but there are others more audible. Once, in the redwood
forest, I heard a beat, something like a drum or a heart coming from the
ground and trees and wind. That underground current stirred a kind of
knowing inside me, a kinship and longing, a dream barely remembered that
disappeared back to the body....

"Tonight, I walk. I am watching the sky. I think of the people who
came before me and how they knew the placement of the stars in the sky,
watching the moving sun long and hard enough to witness how a certain
angle of light touched a stone only once a year. Without written
records, they knew the gods of every night, the small, fine details of
the world around them and the immensity above them.

"Walking, I can almost hear the redwoods beating....It is a world of elemental attention, of all things working together, listening to what speaks in the blood. Whichever road I follow, I walk in the land of many gods, and they love and eat one another. Walking, I am listening to a deeper way. Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me. Be still, they say. Watch and listen. You are the result of the love of thousands."