in Thoreau’s Journal:

Going up the hill through Stow’s young oak wood-land, I listen to the sharp, dry rustle of the withered oak leaves. This is the voice of the wood now. It would be comparatively still and more dreary here in other respects, if it were not for these leaves that hold on. It sounds like the roar of the sea, and is inspiriting like that, suggesting how all the land is sea-coast to the aerial ocean. It is the sound of the surf, the rut, of an unseen ocean, ––billows of air breaking on the forest like water on itself or on sand and rocks. It rises and falls, swells and dies away, with agreeable alternation, as the sea surf does. Perhaps the landsmen can foretell a storm by it.

It is remarkable how universal these grand murmurs are, these backgrounds of sound, ––the surf, the wind in the forest, waterfalls, etc., ––which yet to the ear and in their origin are essentially one voice, the earth voice…