Project Description

Take a walk in the woods without ever leaving your house or your office. Relax, reflect, be inspired…and discover insights you never knew you were searching for.

Listen to the Silence: Lessons from Trees and Other Masters is a quiet invitation to wander a forest path or sit beside a creek, letting the beauty of nature wash away your stress and help you see the world with new eyes. Learn compassion from a bug, hear the wind sweep away the ache in your heart, or let the gentle eyes of a beautiful black dog put your fears into perspective. Find hope and transcendence in the silent wisdom of trees, spiders, and sunlit moss.

In this rare blend of prose-poetry, meditation, and narrative, Jan Allegretti shares her intimate relationship with the Earth and its inhabitants and the transcendence that’s possible when we enter the world of nature and simply listen. Whether you read Listen to the Silence cover to cover or one page at a time, you’ll find a new awareness of what lies outside your door—and inside your heart.

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Praise for Listen to the Silence…

“‘Come walk with me,’ is the invitation this book extends. ‘Come listen to the earth; see it and touch it, and you will be transformed.’ In Listen to the Silence, Jan Allegretti shows us not only the beauty of the world, weaving for us a tapestry of poetic descriptions, but also how to be in the world, how to be a beautiful part of it. She holds out to us, not in theory, but in actual practice, the promise of a rich, abundant, interior life feeding all that we do.”

David Smith-Ferri

Poet Laureate of Ukiah, California; author of Battlefield without Borders

“Jan Allegretti understands the connection between the inner and the outer landscape. Allow her to take you on the journey of a leaf floating on the surface of a creek encountering water bugs, whirlpools, and crosscurrents as it travels downstream. The metaphor of our own lives becomes apparent as she implores us to sit, watch, be still, and allow the natural world to cleanse our souls and teach us the true meaning of peace.”

Justine Willis Toms

co-founder of New Dimensions Media and co-author of True Work: Doing What You Love and Loving What You Do

“Listen to the Silence is a meditation beside a fern-lined mountain stream. It’s a slow, gentle walk in the woods where the only voice you hear is your own—and you suddenly recognize it is but a single instrument amidst infinite voices in Nature’s symphony. This book is Pan’s flute, opening our senses to subtle truths otherwise overlooked in the busyness of our little lives.”

Hal Zina Bennett, Ph.D.,

author of Lens of Perception: A User’s Guide to Higher Consciousness

“I wholeheartedly recommend Jan Allegretti’s new book Listen to the Silence as a powerful and poetic antidote to the ills of post-industrial society. Through her writing, she helps us downshift our speeding minds to a lower gear, in preparation for the wonderful discoveries that come from stillness in every present moment. Her word- paintings, presented in discrete vignettes, draw us into the magic world of nature that she has discovered in the immediate vicinity of her rural Northern California abode. With gentle humor, she shares with us a rediscovery of the invisible resonances of macrocosm with microcosm. If you immerse yourself in this book, you will feel her deep reverence for life, and a rare honesty and openness in the face of human frailty.”

Ron Epstein, Ph.D.,, Research Professor, Institute for World Religions, Berkeley, California

“These gentle pieces are to be savored like listening to a new mother singing lullabies. They are reminders that we are missing real life if we neglect to wander in wild nature with soft eyes and open hearts. A famous writing teacher once said to write with “microscopic truthfulness.” I’ve wondered what that meant until I read Jan’s book. Now I know.”

Dave Smith

co-founder of Smith & Hawken, author of To Be of Use: Seven Seeds of Meaningful Work

“Listen to the Silence was so beautifully written, it has definitely opened my heart and eyes. Thank you.”

Elliot Katz, D.V.M., founder and President Emeritus, In Defense of Animals