Podcasts about Soundwalk

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit chadcrouch.substack.comAnd we're back! More spring rain; more Pacific Wren and Wilson's Warbler duets … It's Forest Park Rain Suite II.And now you might be thinking why split it up? Honestly I don't entirely remember my reasoning, but the main thing that I noticed for some of my work is that once you get to the 40 minute mark, it has a pretty strong sedative effect. That's not a bad thing, necessarily. But I'd like to think my music could be of service to those who want to lean in, as well as lean back. I do quality control listening of my mixes with headphones at night lying in bed. I rarely make it to 40 minutes without falling asleep. So this “halfsies” presentation offers a good old fashioned intermission. Thanks again for reading and listening along. I'm grateful for your interest. Forest Park Rain Suite II is available under the artist name Listening Spot on all streaming platforms Friday, April 18th.Next week, the first of a series of Sound and Vision posts on the Wildwood Trail, and new work from my instrumental project Sleeping Animal!Soundwalk is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit chadcrouch.substack.comFern Canyon is enchanting.My whole raison d'être with soundwalks is to bottle up that feeling. Enchantment. Fascination. Magnetism. These are the robust feelings that pictures and sounds alone often can't quite stir up. I see music as the key.The great thing about music, I believe, is you don't have to be an expert. You don't have to know music theory, and you don't even have to know how to play an instrument better than, say, an eager first-year student. For me, making music is about opening up, being sensitive, exploring. Sharing music can be more fraught. A little over a year ago, I decided to make a home here on Substack. At first, it felt like play; an adventure in publishing. It still does. But, there is some tension with the commerce part. Honestly I feel like I'm floundering with that part of being a Substack author. It's not that I don't like it. I'm on board with writers and artists monetizing their work. From my point of view, it's just challenging to sustain that sense of play, while trying to casually sell some part of it.Today, I'm trying something new, to keep the exploratory vibe alive. Fern Canyon Soundwalk is only available here. Not Spotify, not Bandcamp. Not Qobuz—I like Qobuz by the way. Just here, and in its entirety, just for paid subscribers. It's a little slice of enchantment, and practically speaking, it's hidden. It's if you know, you know. You know? I'm not fancy. Subscriptions start at less than $3/mo.I don't know if I'll get any “conversions” from this post; any new paid subscribers. I decided not to let keep me from trying though. It's probable that I'm making the wrong decision in terms of “exploiting” my work—It seems to me I'd earn more on streaming platforms over time. That's okay. I've always felt better about my place in the economy when I'm not fretting and optimizing. Fern Canyon is in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, in Humboldt County California. It was formed by Home Creek.This modest stream has over the eons carved a 50 to 80 foot deep canyon through the rich sedimentary soils. The canyon walls sprout an amazing variety of luxuriant ferns and other moisture-loving plants. (vistredwoods.com)Composing and finalizing Fern Canyon Soundwalk had many twists and turns. In the end, I went for soft, supple, simple. It's a very tender and naive composition, grounded in felted piano, with chimes and sparkly synths punctuating the arrangement, alongside a myriad of water sounds and sparse birdsong.I usually end with a thank you for your interest. It's not performative. I really mean it. That's all I'm after here…to tell stories with sounds, music, images and words. Folks taking an interest keeps me going. Thank you all!Soundwalk is a reader-supported publication. To be one of a handful of people to hear Fern Canyon Soundwalk in its entirety, consider becoming a subscriber.

This soundwalk was recorded in and around the streets of Siena in Tuscany. We begin in the narrow streets and end at the famous Piazza del Campo, the town's central square and home to the biannual horse race the "palio". UNESCO listing: Historic City of Siena Recorded by Colin Hunter. ——————— This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world's most famous sights. Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage

This soundwalk takes the listener right up to the foot of one of the world's most iconic structures, the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Recorded by Colin Hunter. ——————— This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world's most famous sights. Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage

Immersive Binaural 3D Audio: Sounds of Cap Roach SpanienDu hast die Episode zum Cap Rocat gehört und möchtest noch intensiver in die akustische Welt des Hotels eintauchen? Dann genieße den Soundwalk vor Ort und lass Dich akustisch mitnehmen wie Isabel die langen Schluchten der ehemaligen Militäranlage bis runter zum Meer entlang schreitet.==========Show Notes:==========Hotelwebsite & weitere Informationen

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit chadcrouch.substack.comFor our next series we are going to be exploring various locations in Redwoods National & State Parks. First up, Grove of the Titans!The interesting thing about this grove is that it's not on the official Redwood National Park map. That's because it became too popular in the Instagram and Google maps era. Visitation grew exponentially in the late 2000's and 2010's. The bases and roots of the trees were getting trampled. In response, the park service installed 1,500 feet of metal boardwalk in 2019—contributing a signature sound mark to this particular soundwalk. The other factor the park service considered in its decision to reduce official visibility of this grove is limited access to the trailhead itself, via Howland Hill Road, an old stagecoach route. On this dusty, winding, single-lane gravel road you can practically reach out the window and touch massive old-growth trees—and cars passing the other direction! The truth is, the grove isn't markedly more spectacular than others in the park, which are easier to visit.But there are some unique features. One centerpiece may be Screaming Titans, a fused tree with a diameter of 30 feet, seen from the central platform.Another is Chesty Puller, where the boardwalk winds around another fused giant on a slope. None of these pictures convey the sense of awe that one feels being here in person.What is most distinctive about the soundscape, though, is the absence of sound. We made our visit in the evening, which I'd recommend for the mellow light and the thinned-down crowds on a summer day. Except for the ravens, who add their calls in the final minutes, you'd be hard pressed to pick out other birds, who are sparsely seen but go largely unheard. This surprised me, even in July. My guess is it's a different story in the early morning.But, there is something quieting about the trees themselves, too. The extensive surface area of deeply pitted bark really does dampen sound energy. It's distinctive for the absence of reverberation that one expects in a grove of trees. "The redwoods, once seen, leave a mark or create a vision that stays with you always. No one has ever successfully painted or photographed a redwood tree. The feeling they produce is not transferable. From them comes silence and awe. It's not only their unbelievable stature, nor the color which seems to shift and vary under your eyes, no, they are not like any trees we know, they are ambassadors from another time." - John SteinbeckThe backbone of my score instrumentation is the Hohner Pianet electric piano. Playing off that is a Korg Prototype 8 patch that is sure to cause some lean-back listeners to lean in, on first hearing it. (You'll have to listen via streaming or consider become a supporting subscriber to get my drift here, as it enters the mix in track 4, about five and a half minutes in.) Lastly, there's a little upright piano, celeste and dulcimer. In all, quite minimal. That seems to be my trajectory. Less is more, even when there's no birdsong. I hope you enjoy this very quiet soundwalk through Grove of the Titans. It is most certainly not the default vibe here. If you can make the trip, especially in summer, expect plenty of company. This, and other coast redwood groves here are truly wonders of our planet!Thanks for listening and reading. I'm thankful for your interest. Grove of the Titans Soundwalk is available on all streaming platforms (Spotify, Apple, Tidal, Amazon, YouTube…) on Friday, March 7th.

I haven't yet said this, but my intention with this and the previous three recordings was a hopscotch survey of Pacific Coast soundscapes. To recollect now, these have been Yoakam Point on the Oregon Coast, Copalis Ghost Forest on the Washington Coast, Keahou on the Big Island of Hawaii and now Preston Island in Crescent City, on the Northern California Coast.This reflection on Preston Island leads me to ponder sites along the lower Columbia River at length, for reasons which will soon reveal themselves.Preston Island is weird. For starters, it's not what anyone would call an island. You can walk right out onto its strange rocky surface from the mainland. The view from the island is breathtaking though, and I thought it made a better album cover than the island itself: The island is relatively flat, but also boulder-strewn and cracked. When I visited, it was foggy, and I felt like I was on the surface of another planet. Something about it seemed unnatural:It all clicked when I found this historical photo:Preston Island was carted off. It was mined down to a nub. Let's get our bearings. Here's an 1880's Crescent City map, and a modern satellite photo. (I guess cardinal north pointing up wasn't yet the rule.)On the map you'll see Preston Island clearly drawn as a landmass, and Hall's Bluff, appearing much less prominently than it does today. I outlined the locations on the satellite image. Here, all the rock contained in those geographical features was mined and dumped in the ocean to create the jetty you see on the upper right of the satellite image. They really moved mountains.This is what Preston Island used to look like, and here it is today, courtesy of Google Street View:Our soundwalk takes us from West 5th Street in Crescent City, over to the beach and up over what's now called Half Butte, to about where this old photo of Hall's Bluff (aka Lover's Rock) was taken in 1876. Look at the tiny figures on top for a sense of scale:The massive Lover's Rock headland, was also carted off to build the jetty. It's harder to match the original photo vantage point with Street View, but it's also just completely gone. But let's get back to Preston Island, that weird scab-land of a place. Let's take a closer look at it, because it gives our soundwalk such unique character about 17 minutes in. At a glance, it seems lifeless. A green hue, coming from chalky veins in the rock, adds to the otherworldliness of the landscape.Tide pools form on the perimeter, among the cracks and fissures in the rock substrate. It's here that I place my recording hat down and the soundscape is instantly transformed. The skitter of crabs and the capillary clicking sounds of tiny shellfish erupt to fill the high frequencies, while the surf sound is attenuated by the topography of the rocks.It's another world. A 2021 article in the Bandon Western World states, “Preston Island has a long history in Crescent City. Originally Preston Peak, the area was a sacred site for the Tolowa Nation.” It is not well known, but the Tolowa were the subject of the most persistent and possibly worst massacres of Native Americans in the USA, starting in 1853, in the Crescent City area. Now, I couldn't corroborate the name “Preston Peak”, but I have to admit I was not surprised to hear that a sacred place to Native Americans was destroyed. There have been others.Pillar RockConsider Pillar Rock (briefly “Pilot Rock”) in the Columbia River. Once a monolith upwards of 75 feet tall, it was dynamited and flattened at the 25 foot level to install a navigation light:The Chinookan name for the monolith was Talapus. A cannery built nearby in 1877 used a likeness similar to Talapus for its canned salmon label, Pillar Rock brand. The rock was dynamited by 1922 when, according to the shipping news, a red navigation light was established. Like Talapus, the spring Chinook fishery in the Columbia was a diminished remnant of what it once was when Pillar Rock Cannery suspended operations in 1947.In a surprising epilogue Pillar Rock is still an actively used trade mark today, in 2025. The company now fishes the waters of Alaska for wild Sockeye to fill the modern day tins.It's remarkable how Euro-Americans changed the landscape and practically wiped out the fishery, but the brand is the thing that perseveres. What does it say about us that this is the way things are?Let's consider the intriguing story of Mount Coffin, up the Columbia River about 40 river miles.Mount CoffinThe geological feature that was first described to the historical record by Lieutenant William R. Broughton in 1792, and given the name “Mount Coffin”, was a Chinookan canoe burial ground. It would have appeared much the same a half century later, when Charles Wilkes visited in 1841, but quite different than the 1900 image above. Imagine, if you will, thousands of dugout cedar canoes perched in the trees on the prominent outcrop, about five feet above ground, in varying states of decay, all with bows pointed more or less toward the ocean. Within these canoes lay the interned bodies of Chinookans of the Skilloot tribe, wrapped in cedar blankets with their belongings placed beside them. That scene came to a swift end in 1841.The U.S. Exploring Expedition, led by Charles Wilkes, camped on Mount Coffin in 1841. When the men accidentally let a campfire spread, it destroyed an estimated 3,000 burial canoes. The Chinookan Indians were distressed to discover that their burial site had been destroyed by the negligence of whites and, according to visiting artist Paul Kane, “would no doubt have sought revenge had they felt themselves strong enough to do so.” (Stealing from The Dead, Oregon Historical Quarterly)Many Upper Chinookan villages were by 1841 entirely depopulated following devastating waves of malaria in the early 1830's, so Paul Kane's observation rings true.Within a century this lowland was completely transformed. The largest lumber mill in the world was built upriver from Mount Coffin.Mount Coffin was completely dynamited and quarried, beginning in 1929. The site is a now home to a chemical plant. Flat as a pancake.Finally let's consider the monolith in the heart of the Columbia Gorge that few realize barely escaped dynamite. So we are told…Beacon RockTo the natives it was Che-che-op-tin. When Lewis & Clark mapped the area in 1805 it was referred to as “Beaten Rock” and on return a year later “Beacon Rock”. Later, the 1841 Wilkes Exploring Expedition labelled it “Castle Rock”, which stuck for the better part of a century. Since 1916, it's been Beacon Rock.Just west of Beacon Rock was a large village Captain Lewis in 1806 called Wah-clel-lah (a Watlala winter village):This village appears to be the winter station of the Wah-clel-lahs and Clahclellars…14 houses remain entire but are at this time but thinly inhabited, nine others appear to have been lately removed, and the traces of ten or twelve others of ancient date were to be seen in the rear of their present village. There was also another village at the very foot of beacon rock. Traces of it remained visible to the trained eye into the 1950's.“BIG BLAST WILL WRECK IT”“Castle Rock to Go” and “Whole Rock is Doomed” read the subheadings in a March 16th, 1906 article in The Oregonian. The article outlined how the owners, a coterie of eight businessmen including Dan Kerns, acting as the Columbia Construction Company, had already cut three 20 to 30 ft. tunnels under the southern aspect of the monolith in preparations to dynamite “the shoulder” of the rock and quarry the stone for building material, eventually removing it entirely. A Wikipedia entry states (without citation), “The United States Army Corps of Engineers planned to destroy the rock to supply material for the jetty at the mouth of the Columbia.” This appears to be incorrect. The Army Corps didn't have that plan. The Columbia Construction Company purported to have a plan to mine an initial two million tons for building material (possibly to include jetty material—there were no contracts) in 1906. Columbia jetty work began 20 years prior to that. The Columbia Construction Company was taken to court, and a jury sided with Portland & Seattle Railway, who argued the tunnels were part of an elaborate ruse to “claim damages from $100,000 to $500,000” from lost mining activity due to the rail line going through their intended quarry site. According to the plaintiffs, it was just a scheme to get the railway to pay dearly for the right of way. The jurors dashed that plan, stipulating a $5000 settlement. Was it an elaborate ruse? Or was the jury predisposed not to trust city businessmen? What was clear, according to The Oregonian, was that, “clergymen, leading citizens, women, teachers, and all classes in Portland and throughout the state were horrified as the proposed destruction of such a majestic landmark.” “I should judge Castle Rock contains 10 million tons of first class building stone,” Kerns said in 1906. Interestingly, that wouldn't have been enough for the massive Columbia jetty system, which ultimately required 13 million tons of rock, when competed in 1939, after half century of construction. Henry J. Biddle took ownership of Beacon Rock from the Columbia Construction Company in 1915, under the condition it would be preserved, and set about realizing his dream to build a trail to the summit.Henry J. Biddle purchased the rock in 1915 for $1 and during the next three years constructed a trail with 51 switchbacks, handrails and bridges. The three-quarter mile trail to the top, completed in April 1918, leads to views in all directions. (Wikipedia)Thanks for listening and reading. I'm thankful for your attention. Preston Island Soundwalk is available on all streaming platforms (Spotify, Apple, Tidal, Amazon, YouTube…) on Friday, February 21st.Thanks for reading Soundwalk! This post is public so feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chadcrouch.substack.com/subscribe

Immersive Binaural 3D Audio: Sounds of Chalets Valsegg in Vals, ItalienDas Knacken des Waldes, das beruhigende Rauschen des nahegelegenen Bachs und das zufriedene Schnauben der Chaleteigenen Esel und Ziegen. Das ist die Grundmelodie der Valsegg Chalets. Wer genau hinhört, erkennt das Klappern der Frühstücksteller, wenn die fleißigen Zauberhände am Morgen den Tisch decken… Weidmannsheil!==========Show Notes:==========Hotelwebsite & weitere Informationen

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit chadcrouch.substack.comI want to tell you a ghost story. But, first a music story. In the music industry the story of an album is told in a “one sheet”. Typically a few paragraphs in length, the one sheet explains the outlines of album personnel, timeline, context, and often place, but not always. There are tropes of course, as it is with any kind of writing: there's the comeback album, the vision quest album, the concept album, the crisis and/or rebound album, the joined forces album…In the past two years I've created 60 soundwalk albums and 0 one sheets. Instead, I first added spoken commentary to the top of podcast versions of the soundwalks. (Think spoken liner notes.) These focused on the place and time the field recording was made, and secondarily offered insights into the composition and instrumentation When I shifted my podcast over to Substack, I nixed the spoken intro and wrote posts about whatever I found interesting about the various places. I leaned into more research, wanting to understand the places over time. These writings didn't resemble one sheets at all. Still, I enjoyed the learning that came from them, and I figured the reader could decide whether or not it was of interest to them. I can't imagine writing all those one sheets. What a chore! And so it goes, the ghost story beats the music story. The ghosts at Copalis are the dead trees, and they provide a 325-year-old link to the geologic history of the Pacific Northwest. The Copalis Ghost Forest is the site geologist Brian Atwater used to prove the theory that the Pacific Northwest periodically experiences megathrust earthquakes that cause powerful tsunamis (like the 2011 Tōhoku Quake in Japan that registered 9.0 on the Richter scale.) But what does that have to do with the music, really? And what does that have to do with the soundscape I recorded on March 26th, 2024?Well let's just start with a first impression: It's gorgeous here. The weathered grey stand of snags in the estuary wetland are instantly mysterious, evoking a scene of ruin; an old cemetery of wooden markers in states of advanced decay.Nurse logs play host to a diverse microcosm of life, islands of regeneration.The wildlife in the soundscape evokes that pastoral beauty: the clicky ribbit of Pacific tree frogs, the quiet, glitchy cro-cro-cro of Common Mergansers, the chittery peal of a Belted Kingfisher, and the brisk R2-D2-esque chatter of a marsh wren. Then there is the subtle sound of open space and weather, the tapping of an ephemeral rain shower on the tin roof of a fishing shack. Shhhhhh… Being here alone on an overcast day, I felt something akin to the reverence of a pilgrim. This place is a testament to the energy pent up in the Cascadia Subduction Zone, a coiled spring with the force of 25,000 nuclear bombs. Brian Atwater and David Yamaguchi used soil cores and tree ring dating to show that the trees here died in the winter of 1700. They linked this date to a written record of an "orphan tsunami" recorded in Japan on January 26, 1700, suggesting that the land subsided in a great earthquake, drowning the grove in salt water, and sending a tsunami all the way to Japan. He and his colleagues published these findings in Science magazine in 1995.Here is Atwater in 2014, making a short video recounting a Copalis River visit for an 8th Grade class.Putting together the stratigraphic evidence—from landslides in undersea canyons—scientists further revealed the Pacific Northwest experienced major quakes roughly every 200–800 years. Since the 1990's we've known it's not a matter of if but when. “The Big One” will surely come. So, that's the story of Copalis Ghost Forest in a nutshell. But being here, well, it's much less cerebral and more visceral. That's where music comes in. Music goes where words cannot. For my score I leaned into vibrato drones, plaintive piano and electric piano melodies, lonesome electric guitar, and simmering dulcimer. As always, it's probably best experienced in headphones or a quiet space. Copalis Ghost Forest Soundwalk is available on all streaming platforms (Spotify, Apple, Tidal, Amazon, YouTube…) on Friday, January 31st. For Further WatchingHere Nick Zenter explains the Copalis Ghost Forest with excellent visual storytelling (but you may want to skip the 30 second intro).

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit chadcrouch.substack.comWelcome back. Let's finish our stroll along the Columbia and find out more about this intriguing place. In the first installment we learned how Warrior Point got its name, and about and the rock formation that became the geological cornerstone of Sauvie Island. In this conclusion we arrive at Warrior Rock Lighthouse, the smallest lighthouse in Oregon, and the only one in operation far from the coastline. For this installment I must thank the kind folks at warriorrock.org for sharing several hard-to-find photos and shedding light on some scarcely known stories about the lighthouse. Pre-contact The closest Native American village to Warrior Point on Sauvie Island was Namuit, unmentioned by Lewis & Clark, excepting “2 Houses” drawn on a map in the vicinity of the Warrior Point trailhead is today. I suppose it is worth pointing out that “Warrior Rock” and “Warrior Point” describe two different geological places about a half mile away from each other, and are often interchanged. In 1959 amateur archeologist Emory Stone said of Namuit, “Originally a very large village, it is now completely washed away. Banks of camp rock extend for a quarter of a mile along the river bank. Large collections were made from it as it was eroding away about the turn of the century.” He added, “[It] must have been quite old, for traces of fire are found eight or more feet deep beneath the silt.”Warrior Point was a canoe burial ground. Native Americans practiced this form of burial all along the lower Columbia at promontory sites. Canoes were elevated or placed in trees with the dead wrapped in cedar bark blankets with their belongings. The bows of the canoes pointed toward the ocean.John Kirk Townsend described Mount Coffin, a canoe burial site 13 miles downriver, in his 1841 narrative: "[the burial site] consisted of a great number of canoes containing bodies of Indians, each being carefully wrapped in blankets, and supplied with many of his personal effects in the form of weapons and implements...wrapped in his mantle of skins, laid in his canoe with his paddle, his fishing-spear, and other implements beside him, and placed aloft on some rock or eminence overlooking the river, or bay, or lake that he had frequented. He is fitted out to launch away upon those placid streams…which are prepared in the next world.”Warrior Rock LighthouseThe light house was erected in 1889, a wood framed building with a shed roof on a tall sandstone foundation. The original 1500 lb. fog bell, cast in 1855, tolled for 30 years in a lighthouse at Cape Disappointment prior to installation at Warrior Rock. In 1912, the Lighthouse Service requested $2,000 to purchase 1.61 acres near the lighthouse on which stood a “fairly good dwelling,” which was being occupied by the keeper. The desired amount was appropriated on October 22, 1913, and the dwelling and other buildings on the adjoining land were acquired by the government. (lighthousefriends.com)Looking closely at this photo we can see quite a number of buildings, including a large mill building in the right background, where there are now none.When the river was high, the tower's sandstone foundation and surrounding land would often be underwater. At those times, DeRoy rode an aerial tram he concocted by stringing a cable from a tree near the dwelling to the lighthouse (lighthousefriends.com)Waterway WoesWarrior Rock Lighthouse has seen its share of incidents.1898 - US revenue cutter Commodore Perry ran on a reef a short distance above Warrior Rock. “Pilots familiar with the river always give the reef a wide berth. The steamer Manzanillo had her bottom torn out there 10 years ago, and about 20 years ago the old steamship Sierra Nevada was impaled on the reef.” 1910 - US Lighthouse Tender Heather ran aground on rocks near Warrior Rock. Not badly damaged.1927 - The tug Cricket was sunk near Warrior Rock lighthouse when she collided head on with the steamer Wapama.1928 - A new light to aid river navigation was established on a sunken rock about one fourth of a mile above the Warrior Rock Lighthouse.1930 - The tug Dix which propelled the barge Swan and provided electric current to the floating dance pavilion was found in 50 feet of water a short distance above Warrior Rock lighthouse. Eight people were killed in the collision with the schooner Davenport. 1969 - The lighthouse was struck by a barge. While surveying the damage, the 1500 lb. bell fell to the shoreline and cracked.The bell now resides at the entrance of the Columbia County Courthouse.The current lighthouse owners added, “The lighthouse gets hit by boats more frequently than we would expect. We've heard of two instances in the 90's.”The Warrior Rock formation creates an unusual depth near shore of about 50 ft. Possibly more. “We've seen fishermen catch and release some crazy huge sturgeon there,” the owners shared. One wonders what detritus may have found repose in those waters. Lighthouse Keeper's Home For SaleIn my research I found a 1973 Oregonian real estate ad listing the lighthouse caretaker's home, a shop, and two acres offered at $39,000. Perhaps we can conclude this was the government liquidating obsolete structures, following lighthouse rebuilding and modernization?Adjusted for inflation that's about $280,000 in 2024 dollars. That may sound cheap to some now, but I suspect it would have required a unique buyer then. Here is another photo showing the bungalow in relation to the lighthouse from the early days, circa 1905. Looks like a peaceful homestead!Here is a closer look at the home—date unknown—but given the size of the trees in the background and what looks like a composite shingle roof, I'd guess the 1960's? Here it is today: The house burned down in the early 1990's. The current property owners say, “We've heard from one of the people involved who hiked out to see the place one day that a couple of teenagers were out there when they accidentally caught the place on fire. They tried to get the Sauvie Island Fire Department out there, who announced it wasn't their jurisdiction, and then the St Helens/Columbia County services also claimed it wasn't theirs. They finally got their fathers out there to try to put it out but at that point it was too late.”The trail to the lighthouse today leads by a discretely positioned shipping container near the freestanding chimney and foundation of the old home. It is still private property. The current owners have a website about the lighthouse and environs at warriorrock.org. Much to my surprise and delight, one of them is a musician, sound artist, composer, and educator. So cool!St. Helens Shipbuilding Company, Island Lumber CompanyMany derelict features of post-Euro-American settlement human activity can still be found all around the point: pilings, bricks, concrete, rotting wood and rusting pipe. The pilings on Warrior Point represent the remains of the Island Lumber Company, part of a large complex of lumber industries located on the northern part of Sauvie Island and directly across Multnomah Channel at St. Helens during the late 1800s and early 1900s. Sawmills were established as early as the 1850s in St. Helens. By 1874, Charles and James Muckle operated a mill in that city and owned interests in nearby timber. In 1904 the mill burned and in 1909 the Charles R. McCormick Company bought the site and constructed a new mill. The new mill proved to be extremely productive. To accommodate larger ships than the schooners, that were the most common means of shipping, Charles McCormick formed the St. Helens Shipbuilding Company at a site just south of Warrior Point on Sauvie Island. After the acquisition of additional timber lands, he and his brother Hamlin formed the St. Helens Timber Company in 1912. In 1920, the McCormicks contracted to produce 250 million feet of railroad ties. To fill the order they formed the Island Lumber Company and built a mill and a shipping pier at Warrior Point on Sauvie Island. (ifish.net)One of the most storied ships turned out by the St. Helens Shipbuilding Company was the Wapama, launched in 1915, surviving almost 100 years before being dismantled in 2013. Once part of the National Maritime Museum in San Francisco, it was the last example of some 225 wooden steam schooners that served along the Pacific coast. The NMM still hosts a PDF of the Wapama brochure. Detail-oriented readers may recall it was Wapama that was involved in a collision that sunk the tug Cricket off Warrior Rock in 1927.Between 1912 and 1927 the St. Helens Shipbuilding Company on Sauvie Island just south of Warrior Point launched 42 wooden ships. (Wikipedia)ConclusionAnd so we come to an end in our learning and listening series in this place once called the Wapato Valley. Little more than 200 years ago it was the domain of the Chinookan people. Today it is a bustling corridor of commerce, industry, and recreation too. Here Sauvie Island Wildlife Area, Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge and Shillapoo Wildlife Area create an aggregated wildlife conservation area on both sides of the Columbia measuring about 20,000 acres in total. In many ways, these lands are little changed.Warrior Rock Soundwalk Part 2 is notably quieter than Part 1. In truth, the soundscape isn't particularly quiet here. It feels quiet, but there is a low frequency hum produced by I-5 and Hwy 30 that settles in here like a fog. I removed much of that with a low shelf EQ to approximate a less industrialized time. And, much like the nearby Oaks to Wetlands Trail Soundwalk yielded an anthropogenic alternative soundscape with Four Trains, I could have made a nautical version from the cut-outs here: Four Ships? Another time, perhaps.On the way back we hear the groaning of sea lions out in the middle of the river. This is a photo I snapped on a the opposite shore five days earlier. I love the sweetening of the acoustics at this distance. Thanks for joining me on this survey of sights, sounds and stories from the Wapato Valley!Warrior Rock Soundwalk Part 1 is out now on all streaming services.Warrior Rock Soundwalk Part 2 is available on all streaming platforms (Spotify, Apple, Tidal, Amazon, YouTube…) tomorrow, Friday, December 20th.

Hört ihr das Rattern der Timetable-Boards, die die nächsten Flüge anzeigen? Die Musik der 60er Jahre im Hintergrund, die gleich die richtige Stimmung dieses besonderen Ortes erschafft? Und das stetig laufende Gepäckband? Wer ganz genau hinhört, der entdeckt von der Rooftop-Terrasse auch die Flugzeugturbinen…. Das alles sind die Sounds im schönsten Flughafen Hotel der Welt! ==========Show Notes:==========Hotelwebsite & weitere Informationen

The Warrior Point Trail is a 7 mile out-and-back stroll on a dirt lane along the bank of the Columbia River among cottonwood forests, grassy meadows, and several lakes. The lakes are never really in clear view, but in the winter you are aware of them, being the preferred locales of sometimes raucous Tundra Swans. I started off walking along the water, joining the proper trail the better part of a mile north. The light, fine rain sounded like tiny pin pricks on my hat and coat. The wake of a passing barge was still settling, even as it passed out of sight. I saw a cloud of Canadian Geese coalesce in the sky downriver and disappear as soon as they had come. The river was wide and serene. A crow winged by with a fish in its mouth. I zoomed in on the destination downriver, Warrior Rock Lighthouse. The smallest lighthouse in Oregon. Why is it called Warrior Rock, you might ask? Well, like so many things around here the words were chosen from the perspective of the explorer and put on a map, and it stuck. The tale of the encounter that inspired that name, most likely with the Cathlapotle band of Chinooks, goes like this:On October 28, 1792, a British exploration party paddling up the Columbia in the ship's launch and cutter boats encountered twenty-three canoes with about two hundred Chinookans aboard, most of them wearing armored vests and holding weapons. Lt. William Broughton, captain of the HMS Chatham, the tender vessel for George Vancouver's HMS Discovery, led the British force. Seeing his men clearly outnumbered, Broughton ordered the launch's swivel gun loaded and primed for discharge. He loaded his own musket and fired a ball in the water to forewarn and frighten the Chinook. While the only violence during the encounter came from the British mariners, the place-name Broughton affixed to the place—Point Warrior—represents his characterization of the Native canoe men. (oregonencyclopedia.org)The denouement was described by the ship's clerk, “[seeing] that our intentions were as peacable, as their own, they took off all their War Garments, and every man seem'd eager to dispose of his Bows and Arrows for old Buttons, Beads, etc.”The rock formation the lighthouse was built on is the reason Sauvie Island exists. During the last ice age, several cataclysmic flash flood events scoured out the Columbia Basin, originating from ice dam breaches in the area of modern day Missoula, MT. Looking up on the hillsides of that Montana college town one can still make out the terraced waterline pattern of a vast glacial lake. When all that water coursed through this section of river, it uncovered the Warrior Rock formation in the basin. The resistant grey limestone formation acted like a dam, holding back sediment deposits along its southwest axis. Thus, Sauvie Island is only about 10,000 years young, give or take a couple thousand years. Along the way I stopped to watch a family of Pileated Woodpeckers. Bald Eagles abound here.I completed this instrumental score fairly recently, so the discerning listener may note the sound palette bearing a resemblance to the recently launched Listening Spot series: instrument voices that function like string arrangements but were created from pedal steel guitar, dobro, and mellotron are used for the first time here. It strikes me that these are like sedimentary layers of sound deposited against the backbone of (mostly) Pianet electric piano.I tend to be quite slow on my walks, especially when there are so many interesting things to see and hear. As a result I came away with several hours of source audio. I decided to cut that down to just shy of an hour, and subsequently split that in two because I kept falling asleep when listening to the mixes at night. On the whole it's quite reflective. A good end-of-year listen, I think. So I'm keeping the entirety of Part 1 unrestricted, for all who may want to listen to it on this platform, or via their podcast app. Part two will be released next week. Warrior Rock Soundwalk Part 1 is available on all streaming platforms (Spotify, Apple, Tidal, Amazon, YouTube…) tomorrow, Friday, December 13th. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chadcrouch.substack.com/subscribe

Immersive Binaural 3D Audio: Sounds of RAKxa Integrative Wellness - Bangkok, Thailand Kann man Gesundheit hören? Wenn dann muss es hier möglich sein. Begleite Clemens auf seinem abendlichen Sound Walk durch das RAKxa Integrative Wellness. Vielleicht schwappt die Entspannung der grünen Oase vor den Toren Bangkoks auf Dich über oder hört man da etwa doch in weiter Ferne den Großstadtdschungel? ==========Show Notes:==========Hotelwebsite & weitere Informationen

This week we are crossing the river from Sauvie Island in Oregon to Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge (NWR) in Washington state. The Northern tip of the island is directly across from where we are walking today: on recently restored trail in the refuge known as the Oaks to Wetland Trail. In 2019 hundreds of Douglas Fir trees were felled and removed from this area to encourage “oak release”. An oak woodland used to reign supreme here, thanks to low-level fires managed by the indigenous people, keeping the land relatively clear for game grazing and promoting berry plants.Remember how I was complaining Oregon state agencies presently provide almost nothing in terms of education and memorialization on Sauvie Island about what was once may have been the most densely populated area of Native Americans in what is now the United States? Ridgefield NWR has done something pretty remarkable in contrast, by facilitating the construction of the Cathlapotle Plankhouse. The building is based on more than a decade's worth of archaeological research at the site, which began in the 1990s where a large village of the Cathlapotle Nation once stood. It took over 100 volunteers two years to complete it, and the official opening ceremony was conducted on March 29, 2005. (nps.gov)For the past 20 years the Cathlapotle plankhouse has served the modern Chinook Tribe as the site of their annual winter gatherings. Standing up close to the structure one has to marvel at the sheer density of the plankhouse. The planks for the roof and walls are >2 inches thick, and >2 feet wide old-growth Western redcedar. Both the trees, and 3500 hours of volunteer labor were all donated. If one had to itemize the cost of the project at market prices today, it would likely have a multi-million dollar price tag. To the layperson it resembles so many old barns that dot the surrounding rural landscape, but to those with an understanding of construction materials, and the added time and cost of working in the old ways, it's truly a marvel; something the many contributors can be proud of. Our soundwalk begins more or less here, at the plankhouse among Oregon white oaks, looking out over a landscape of lakes and wetlands. Not far off the remains of Cathlapotle village (numbering fourteen houses with an estimated population of 900 in 1806) slumber in the soil, just out of sight, near the Columbia River shore.Cathlapotle was one of the largest of the Wapato Valley villages—of at least 16 villages in all—sharing a common dialect, and ways of life. Explorers Lewis & Clark put it this way:All the tribes in the neighborhood of Wapato island, we have considered as Multnomahs, not because they are in any degree subordinate to that nation; but they all seem to regard the Multnomahs as the most powerful.Multnomah, on Sauvie Island, as we discovered a few weeks ago had a population of some 2400 in 1806, diminished by the introduction of smallpox in the 1780's. In the late 1830's the village was burned to the ground following a devastating malaria epidemic that left too few survivors to tend to the dead. “River erosion, development and looting have destroyed virtually all of the Chinook town sites. But Cathlapotle was spared,” said Kenneth M. Ames, PSU professor of anthropology who lead the archeological investigation that took place in the 1990's. Ames' excavation revealed:*Radiocarbon dates on charcoal from hearths place occupation from at least 900 years ago to the 1840s.*Various pieces of evidence indicate possibly two occupations of the site, with the last one having been continuously occupied for 1,500 years by up to 1,400 people, Ames said. He believes there was an earlier occupation as far back as 2,000 years ago. (The Oregonian, Aug 7, 1994)As I walked the trail beneath a cloudy sky, I tried to imagine the area in that pre-contact state, as I usually do. I think it would have looked similar, but of course it would have sounded much different. There would have been no leaf blowers or dogs barking from the expanding residential areas over the hill. No airplanes overhead. And, perhaps most distinctly for this site, there would have been no trains rumbling past. Access to this section of the refuge requires a short walk on a pedestrian bridge over train tracks. Trains glide by frequently. My quiet to loud ratio here was about 65 / 35. As usual, I spliced together the quiet sections of my walk to create this idealized pre-industrial soundwalk soundscape. I used my binaural Sennheiser Ambeo Headset for this recording, which performs quite well in the rain, if it's not too windy. The mics were tucked into the concavity of my ears, sheltered from rain drops. The soundscape is really quiet and tranquil. Tundra Swans and Varied Thrushes sound so reverberant and sweet. My score is textural, spacious, and plaintive, I would say. It occurred to me that I could chain together the out-takes for an alternate “selectively industrialized” version. Voila: Four Trains Soundwalk was released a couple days ago as a flipside to this one. This was a surprise hit in my own listening habits. I found myself oddly soothed by the low frequency rumbles at bedtime, lulled by the anticipation of the iron beast transits.That's it for this week. Once again, thank you for indulging me, for being here, for listening. Oaks to Wetland Trail Soundwalk is available on all streaming platforms (Spotify, Apple, Tidal, Amazon, YouTube…) tomorrow, Friday, November 15th. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chadcrouch.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit chadcrouch.substack.comToday we have a bit of a departure. This 31 minute soundwalk was recorded at Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge on January 28th, 2024. It is the flipside—both figuratively and literally—to the upcoming Oaks to Wetland Trail Soundwalk. I'm calling it Four Trains Soundwalk.Stretches of quiet and stretches of train noise were intertwined in my lived experience, but as always, effectuating a pre-industrial soundscape requires substantial editing in the way of splices and EQ. Rather than let these appealing train recordings become so much digital ash, I've compiled them here. Visually speaking, this is what that looks like. The spectrograms below are basically just heat maps for sound. The first image is the natural soundscape—the birds, the creek, and the rain. The second is the four trains. (Not preserved is any aircraft noise.)Think of this as a trainspotting album. Trainlistening? It's really quite a treat to have just trains, wildlife and rain sounds. The low frequency hums, the clank-clank, the doppler effects, and the periodic pneumatic “psst” sounds are quite relaxing. The wildlife, creek, and rain sounds soften the industrial edges. It's a top 3 insomnia / get-to-sleep album for me over the past several months. I'm happy to share it with you finally. For my instrumental score, I leaned heavily into textural synth drones mirroring the energy of the passing trains. I hope you enjoy it!

Rentenaar Road is just a flood-prone, gravel road through blackberry briars on the east side the Sauvie Island Wildlife Area. It does not look particularly special or inviting. But it is. It's a portal to the kingdom of birds that have come to this island every winter for time immemorial. And, unless you're there to hunt, it's as close as you can get to the large flocks of Snow Geese, Canada Geese, Tundra Swans, Sandhill Cranes and various ducks and coots.The sound of these large flocks is visceral. A tradeoff of coming here though, for the uninitiated, is the manifold shotgun rifle reports that distract from the enjoyment of the natural soundscape. (I'm sure for the hunter it's an exciting sound, like the chime of a slot machine for a gambler. Tomato, tomawto.) The island is also under a commercial flight corridor; the noise of which is inescapable. Here's a tip: Check the hunting season calendar to visit on an off day, or come in February, when there's still lots of birds and the duck hunting season is concluded. Any reports you hear should be distant and less frequent. And, maybe bring some galoshes. I came on a gray February day and walked down the lane, until I came to the flooded area, and I just stood there with water all around me, soaking up the wildlife sound until a rain shower came. You know, I often feel like my soundwalks are kind of like Tootsie Pops; the sweetest part encased inside. You have to spend some time to get to it. That's the way I feel about the end of Rentenaar Road Soundwalk. I just love the sound of the gentle rain starting, falling on the pond-like puddle; the way the rain seems to calm the thousands of birds nearby. I quietly take off my recording hat, and hold it close to the puddle surface. It's an entrancing sizzle that concludes the piece. I hope you can spend some time with it. Rentenaar Road Soundwalk is available on all streaming platforms (Spotify, Apple, Tidal, Amazon, YouTube…) tomorrow, Friday, October 18th.Two more things: * Yesterday I offered an amuse-bouche alternate of this walk with galoshes on. Check out Rentenaar Wade Soundwalk here:* Also this Friday, Nov. 1st, Cultural Norms (20th Anniversary Edition) by my old indie pop band Blanket Music will be released. It features several bonus tracks, with parallels and through-lines to the state of the nation today. Hear it on all streaming platforms. (Spotify, Apple, Tidal, Amazon, and YouTube…) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chadcrouch.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit chadcrouch.substack.comWe're back on Sauvie Island for a special bonus soundwalk. Or maybe it's a soundwade. Feel free to play the audio as you read on. A satellite view of Sauvie Island reveals a squiggly teardrop-shape island about the size of Manhattan. The upper half of that teardrop has an assemblage of lakes that resembles a heart with chambers and valves and arteries. Now look closer; there is a thin straight line running perpendicular on the right side of our view, surrounded by fields, just about where the aorta would emerge. That is Rentenaar Road. If you're not there to hunt, it's as close as you can get to see and hear the spectacle. In a wet year, the road can resemble a canal:So before I reveal Rentenaar Road Soundwalk tomorrow, let's throw on some galoshes and wade in! I'm happy to present Rentenaar Wade Soundwalk as an amuse-bouche:

Soundwalk through the city market in Blonie, Poland.  Recorded by Dominik Witaszczyk. IMAGE: MateuszEs, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit chadcrouch.substack.comWapato Park is pretty great, partially because it's easily overlooked and therefore never crowded. Its full name is Wapato Access Greenway State Park. It's a sleeper park, the kind you stumble on if you like studying maps. The small gravel parking lot trailhead is on a dead end road, and easy to miss. Interestingly, it's the only trailhead on Sauvie Island that you don't have to pay $10 ($30/yr) to park at. In the winter the trail can be quite muddy, in the late spring and summer it can get buggy, and if you're really unlucky, your car can get busted into. Still, it's worth a visit.On a mild February day earlier this year I strolled around its shores, and down to the dock on the river. This soundscape records the wildlife and ambience of winter. You'll hear Common Raven, spirited and unusual vocalizations from Stellar's Jays, a Pileated Woodpecker, Ruby-crowned and Golden-crowned Kinglets, and all kinds of water birds. Sometimes you even see Tundra Swans in small numbers here.Reminiscences of Louis Labonte (1900) recalls life on Scappoose Creek near Sauvie's Island, as a teenage boy, from about 1833 to 1836. Labonte [Jr.] was the son of Astor expedition member Louis Labonte [Sr.] and his native wife, daughter of Clatsop Chief Coboway.Game on the ponds of the island was very abundant, consisting of deer, bear, and panthers and wildcats; and beaver were still plentiful; but the waterfowl of the most magnificent kind, at their season of passage, and, indeed much of the year, almost forbade the hunter to sleep.Indeed, the lake was so covered by the flock as almost to conceal the water.So we can forgive Capt. William Clark for his 1805 journal remark referring to the swans, geese and cranes: “they were emensely numerous and their noise horrid.” Here we have another recollection of wildlife din riotous enough to make sleeping difficult.And, here I am thinking about this place prior to Euro-American settlement again, prior to industrialization and the inescapable anthropogenic noise coming from the commercial aircraft corridor above, the highway to the west, and the motorboats in the channel.Now, you might be thinking to yourself, boy Chad sure brings up indigenous people a lot, for being a field recording and music guy. It's true. I think it's because I get so tuned into natural soundscape, that I'm curious to imagine all the details of what life was like two hundred-plus years ago. When I'm editing my field recordings with splices and EQ filters and cut & paste techniques to approximate a pre-industrial quietude, I can't help but think people used to be much more in tune with wildlife and weather. In the vicinity of Wapato Park, human history goes deeper than is often discussed. According to amateur archeologist Emory Strong, there are three archeological points of interest nearby:MU 6. Cath-la-nah-qui-ah. six houses and 400 inhabitants.  Nathaniel Wyeth built Fort William near this town but the residents had all died in the pestilence by then. Dr. Mclaughlin had all the houses burned.  Excavations reveal everything covered with a film of cedar charcoal.MU 7. The site of Wyeth's Fort WilliamMU 8. One of the prehistoric sites that appears to be very old. There are no game or fish bones, and the midden has a different character from the more recent sites. (Stone Age on the Columbia River, 1958)[“MU” here is just an archeological prefix indicating Multnomah County. The modern trinomial standard now includes a code for Oregon as a prefix: 35 MU 6 and so on.] Each is an interesting story. Let's discuss. (35 MU 6) Cath-la-nah-qui-ah (or Gat-la-na-koa-iq), was a Multnomah tribe village on Multnomah Channel. The size estimate of 400 inhabitants belongs to Lewis and Clark. This would have been about half the size of the main Multnomah village on the other side of the island, in that time period. This is what that milieu looked like on the day I visited.This is what the plank houses looked like 200 years ago. They varied in size from 15' x 30' all the way up to 30' x 400':This is what the inside of a plankhouse looked like:Today, if not obliterated by erosion, or dike building, one would only expect to see slight depression in the soil on the site where one of these plankhouses stood. In the early 1800's there were hundreds of them on the lower Columbia. The pestilence of the 1830's is now widely regarded to have been a malaria epidemic. Sauvie Island tribes—perhaps owing to the marshy landscape— were particularly devastated. The Indians believed it had been introduced by an American ship involved in the salmon trade, the Owyhee, commanded by John Dominis. They may have been right, as the ship had visited malarial ports before sailing to the Columbia. The impact of fever and ague on Native people in Oregon was earthshaking. In the 1820s, they had been by far the majority population in the region; by the early 1840s, they were in the minority. (Disease Epidemics among Indians, 1770s-1850s)Dr. McLoughlin was the Chief Factor of Fort Vancouver, upriver about 10 miles. This was the center of operations and trade for the entire Pacific Northwest, on behalf of French-Canadian Hudson's Bay Co (HBC). In addition to the to the Cath-la-nah-qui-ah village, HBC men also burned the larger Multnomah village (35 MU 2, 800 inhabitants, originally much larger) on the east side of the island, presumably in an effort to curb the epidemic.In an 1895 article for The Oregonian, pioneer John Minto reminisced about the “old Multnomah nation” and its appearance fifty years before, in 1845. We landed and camped for the night at the site of the last Multnomah village, but at which that time there were no Indians nor sign of recent Indian life. There was however an extensive city of the dead, a cemetery laid out in streets as wide as the plat of Riverview Cemetery at Portland. The dead were deposited on structures of wide split cedar boards three or more inches thick, set upright; sometimes three tiers of horizontal boards one above the other, mortised into and secured by twisted inner bark of cedar. On these the dead were laid wrapped in cedar bark. He included this remark about what he heard:It was rare that a traveller should pass a village at night without hearing at the same time the women wailing for the dead and the monotonous beat of a tom-tom. Now, I know that maybe this all seems like a tangent. But, these are testimonials both to the look and sound of that time that I think is not just interesting, but worth sharing, particularly on public lands where these events happened. And for my part, why not include them with narratives about my soundscape recordings also bearing witness to the land?Just 8 years after Minto's observations of the Multnomah village site, in 1853, Simon Morgan Reeder settled the donation land claim (originally belonging to one N. D. Miller) on which once stood the largest village of the island. Today the main road on the east side of the island, Reeder Road, bears his name. Now let us turn to (35 MU 7) Fort William, the abandoned effort to set up a trading post on Sauvie Island by Nathaniel J. Wyeth, rivaling HBC, on behalf of American investors in 1834. Two roadside monuments have been erected nearby. Let's be clear: these are monuments to a failed business venture. Upon arrival, Wyeth saw opportunity in the Natives' misfortune, writing in his journals "providence has made room for me and with doing them [Natives] more injury than I should if I had made room for myself viz Killing them off."[3]Wyeth had many setbacks in his attempt to establish Fort William. In 1835 one of his men was killed at the hands of another. Reading a correspondence from his investors, one might surmise Wyatt was a poor communicator, if not lacking the temperament of a leader.Finally there is (35 MU 8) “a prehistoric site that appears to be very old. There are no game or fish bones…” Here we are to understand the bones decomposed in the intervening time span. These weren't the original vegans of the Portland basin. My best attempts to research this further yielded nothing. Were these the ancestors of the Multnomahs, the Chinookan peoples? The landscape holds a lot of mysteries. I think about them when I listen to it. Thank you for reading and listening. I hope you enjoy Wapato Park Soundwalk. Wapato Park Soundwalk is available on all streaming platforms (Spotify, Apple, Tidal, Amazon, YouTube…) tomorrow, Friday, October 18th.

Immersive Binaural 3D Audio: Sounds of One & Only Mandarina – Riviera Nayarit, MexikoDu hast die tropische Episode vom One & Only Mandarina gehört und möchtest noch mehr Sounds von Boa, Gottesanbeterin und Co? Dann folge uns durch die Anlage, vorbei an den brennenden Feueröfen bis hinunter zur Bucht, wo das Meer gegen die ummantelnden Klippen peitscht und lass Dich von der akustischen Kulisse verzaubern… ==========Show Notes:==========Hotelwebsite & weitere Informationen

It's Oct 2nd as I write. The Oak Island area on Sauvie Island, near Portland Oregon closed to recreational use for the season yesterday. For the coming Fall and Winter, it will serve as a haven for the birds, save for the occasional hunters. Last winter, when I brought my Soundwalk podcast to Substack, I embarked on a series touching down at certain points in the greater area I referred to as the Columbia Lowlands. I'm pleased to say I'm taking us back there, covering some spots that I didn't get to last time through. Lewis and Clark called this area the Wappato Valley, after the edible tuber, Wapato, that the Native Americans harvested here on Sauvie Island. The island was also named Wappato Island, the geographical center of Wappato Valley. (Both the double P spelling and the geographic names didn't really take.) Today, this area is also referred to as the Portland Basin.Oak Island in the early 1800s would have looked pretty similar to what it looks like now—only without pastures—and the name would have made more sense than it does today, because the land mass used to be surrounded by shallow lakes. Today it more resembles a peninsula. Like the lakes of the Columbia Bayou (slough) on north side of Portland, many lakes on Sauvie Island were drained in the early 1900's, and dikes were built, hardening the river bank. Now, as far as I know, the only marker honoring the stewardship of this land by Native Americans is found a few steps into the Oak Island Nature Trail. There you will see wood post with a line drawing of a two people in a canoe with a QR code underneath. Focusing on that QR code with a smartphone will pull up a page, offering the following:Two hundred years ago, Native Americans walked on this very spot. Each year, just before winter, tribes from up and down the Columbia and Willamette rivers gathered on Oak Island for a trading fair which included dancing and festivities.I want to know more about that. I want to imagine what that looked like, what that sounded like. Of the environmental sound, Capt. William Clark leaves only this description on November 5th, 1805, from the vicinity of Sauvie Island:I could not sleep for the noise kept by the Swans, Geese, white & black brant, Ducks etc. on a opposit base, & Sand hill Crane, they were emensely numerous and their noise horrid. Immensely numerous and horrid. Ha! We will hear numerous birds soon enough in our extended soundwalk survey. For now, on our Oak Island Road Soundwalk, we hear just a handful of bugling Sandhill Cranes, small flocks of geese, wintering songbirds, Pacific tree frogs and light rain showers. Anything but horrid to my ears. Dig a little deeper and you'll discover 200 years ago is just the tip of the iceberg. Native Americans lived in various village sites on the island dating back 2500 years; one thousand generations! (Archeological sites upriver near The Dalles increase that time horizon to human occupation of the area going back well over 10,000 years ago). And all they got was a QR code.How do we know Native Americans lived on Sauvie Island so long? Well, less than a mile south of Oak Island is Merrybelle Farm. Several archeological digs occurred here, beginning in 1958. Analyzing the projectile points and found here with others found on the island and throughout the region, Richard Pettigrew points to an estimated timeline of village occupation at the Merrybelle site from 600 BCE to 200 CE. There were 16 known village sites on Sauvie Island. Several have been the subject of formal archeological excavation. Many were picked over by amateur artifact collectors. Some were buried or partially buried under tons of dike soil. One was “sunken”, preserving woven baskets in the mud for up to 700 years. Today there's no physical reminder of the civilization that existed here before Euro-American settlers; no formal mention or marker, save for a recently renamed bridge. Wapato Bridge. It's a start. Scholars believe the Wapato Valley once sustained the highest population density north of Mexico in aboriginal times. Isn't this a story that should be told?In fourth grade we had a “Pioneer Day”. We came to school in costume: bonnets for the girls. Cowboy hats for boys. Did some boys bring toy guns? Did anyone dress up as an Indian? Seems plausible. We rolled out pasta from scratch, cutting broad noodles for chicken noodle soup “like the pioneers did”. We pledged allegiance to the flag every morning. We did not learn we were inhabiting what was once the cradle of the largest Native American population center, in the Portland Basin, in the United States. When I walk around on Sauvie Island, I try to picture the long house villages, and the multitude of dugout canoes. When I went paddleboarding on Sturgeon Lake a month ago my feet sank up to my calves in mud as I clumsily launched my craft. I imagined Wapato growing there, plentifully. I imagined Native Americans loosening the root bulbs with their toes, harvesting them in floating baskets. The land of plenty. People of the river.This soundwalk was recorded on mild December evening last year, on Oak Island Road, adjacent the Wildlife Area. There are half a dozen farm houses on this quiet spur road. It was very relaxing, and nourishing. I totally recommend this to anyone in the area. Like last time, the composition is almost entirely solo performances strung together. Four voices: piano, a clean Wurlitzer electric piano, a modified Wurlitzer electric piano, and a piano with heavy tape effects. All taking turns. It won't always be like this, though. In fact, next week I have a whole new direction I'm excited to unveil! Til then, thanks for reading, for listening, for joining me here.Oak Island Road Soundwalk is available on all streaming platforms (Spotify, Apple, Tidal, Amazon, YouTube…) today, Friday, October 4th. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chadcrouch.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit chadcrouch.substack.comAnd now we return to our soundwalk series on quiet spots in the city. This is part two of two. But before we get to that, I'd just like to take a minute to reflect on my journey to get here.On April 29, 2022 I released Chapman Beach Soundwalk. It was both extremely simple and, to me, experimental. It was in a nutshell: a natural soundscape with musical soundtrack. I had no basis to believe that the idea would commercially viable, and to be honest, while it has shown promise, it hasn't really caught on in a big way either. Still, I persuaded myself to keep doing it, as a practice. And so, here we are, two and a half years on, and we've come to soundwalk #50. Let me tell you, it is possible to be both proud and embarrassed at the same time. Proud because, well, fifty! Embarrassed because, well, you know—fifty. A string of 50 non-hits, if you will. At a good clip, too! So, for #50, we are rediscovering Reed Canyon, another “hidden” natural area near downtown Portland, Oregon. Type it into a mapping app, and it won't know where to go. This is because is not a nature park and is not public land. It's on the Reed College campus, and thankfully, the campus welcomes neighbors, near and far, who enjoy walking the trails that wind around the canyon's lake shore and through a wetland environment on its east end. The canyon was formed by Crystal Springs, which erupts from the broad plane of inner SE Portland next to huddle of buildings forming the Reed College Campus. According to a historical overview, surveys indicate Reed Lake is the oldest naturally occurring lake in Portland. That's not saying an awful lot, as Portland topography isn't especially dotted with lakes. It also depends on where you draw the city limits, of course. If anything, the city has filled in most of the lakes it once had, alongside the Willamette and Columbia Rivers. Let's go ahead and name those lakes, and when they were filled in, for posterity. I'd estimate Portland lost more than 75% of its total lake surface area in the last century. Historical Lakes of Portland, Oregon* Guild's Lake c. 1913-1926* Kittridge & Doane Lakes c. 1930* Mud Lake c. 1930* Switzler's Lake & Columbia Slough unnamed lakes c.1930* Ramsey Lake c. 1964* Mock's Bottom c.1980So, being able to walk around a natural lake in Portland anymore is a rare thing! And just to be clear, while the basin is natural, the Reed Lake water level has been maintained by a small dam built in 1929.This walk takes place on a drizzly leap year day—February 29th—of this past year. Winter and Spring are perhaps my favorite seasons here. Waterfowl motor around. Mallards, Buffleheads, Hooded Mergansers, Wigeon, Gadwall, and Canada Geese are all common visitors. Huge flocks of geese sometimes wheel overhead, attracted to the all-you-can-eat lawn buffet the campus provides just over the canyon rim. Songbirds sound so sweet here in this intimate and reverberant canyon, that you can easily forget that there's a city all around you.My composition features almost all solo performances of piano, unplugged Wurlitzer electric piano, a “soft clarinet” synth pad, and a “bottle” synth sound that I think sounds like droplets. Oh, and zither. All performed unrehearsed, warts and all. Why? Well, because, for now, it conveys what I want to convey; some alchemical expression forged in the naïveté—the grasping. Part of me thinks I'll eventually work myself out of a job here. Meaning, my music will become by degrees more spare and quiet and adrift that eventually all the will be left is the natural soundscape.It reminds me of a trope of architecture writers that goes something like, “The design sought to blend seamlessly with the landscape.” It seems like four out off five articles in Dwell magazine used parade that one out. Meanwhile, walls of glass and rectilinear volumes were de rigueur. There's a limit to the blending that can occur with that design language, and it's far from “seamless”.When you boil it down, I think it's pretty common to try and convince other people you are doing something thoughtfully, when really we're all just kind of clunky. Nothing is seamless. So why try and convince? Embrace Your Clunkiness! I say.Anyway, thanks for reading. I hope you can spend some quiet time with Reed Canyon Soundwalk. Or better, head on over there in real life, if you can. It's nice. You'll like it.Reed Canyon Soundwalk is available on all streaming platforms (Spotify, Apple, Tidal, Amazon, YouTube…) Friday, September 20th.

Welcome back. It's a new season of Soundwalk, the album series / podcast / newsletter that transports you to sound-rich natural places via roving binaural audio field recordings paired to a melodic, ambient score. In this short two-part season we are discovering serene soundscapes within the city of Portland, Oregon. Thank you for tuning in!See that dark green canyon in the foreground? That's where we're going to escape the sound of the city, within the city.Every Portlander knows about Forest Park, the forested hillside roughly eight miles long and one mile wide, northwest of the city. Most Portlanders have visited it. In contrast, my guess is less than one in ten would be able to point to Marquam Nature Park on a map, and even less have visited.Marquam is the “secret” nature park mere minutes from downtown. I've posted field recordings from here before, but this is the first soundwalk I've shared. What's most noteworthy about this place to me is how quickly the canyon spirits you away from the hum of the city as you venture in. It's really quite amazing. The city throbs at full volume just over the hill, and here—provided leaf blowers aren't in use on residential properties along the bluff— you'll find serene quiet; the twitter of birds, the murmur of streams. At the park's main gateway the visitor is greeted by a tile mosaic that forms an amphitheater. Inscribed in its depiction of park flora and fauna is this message: Tranquility reminds us that we are a small part of nature in a place where listening and looking inspire us.Sometimes I wonder if I've become a bit extreme about sound. That is, I wonder if I'm peculiarly bothered by city noise or unusually thirsty for quiet refuges. This message hints to me that I'm not alone. “Tranquility” and “listening” strike me as potent and deliberate word choices. Unlike the new Forest Park entrance north of town, this one embraces the visitor and conveys them quickly to a natural, tranquil setting.Thus, on our soundwalk from Mar 8th of this year, we encounter the sounds of Dark-eyed Junco, Chestnut-backed Chickadee, Pacific Wren, American Robin, Golden-crowned Kinglet and others all rising above the many creeks, streams and seeps we pass by on foot. At the 25 minute mark we come to a trail culvert spitting out water in a rhythm. It's an unusual and entrancing sound, worth lingering on. A Pacific Wren sings in the distance. Junco trills percolate through the canyon. Synthesizers pulse and sweep in response. It's a recipe for a reverie, if you're open to it. The instrumentation is comprised of piano, zither, and electric piano—all played solo—with occasional woodwind (clarinet & bass clarinet) and synth pad accompaniment. As always it errs on the side of minimalism.Marquam Nature Park Soundwalk is available on all streaming platforms (Spotify, Apple, Tidal, Amazon, YouTube…) Friday, September 6th. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chadcrouch.substack.com/subscribe

When I turned twenty-one in 1994, I embarked on a 500 mile solo hike on the Pacific Crest Trail across the state of Washington.  The Tread of My Soul is a memoir-meets-travelogue written from the trail.  Originally self published and shared with only a handful of family and friends, I recently dusted off the manuscript with the intention of sharing it with a new generation, on the 30th anniversary of its completion. Among black bears, ravens and Indian paintbrush, I grappled with the meaning of life while traversing the spine of the Cascade range with a handful of pocket edition classics in tow. Quotes from sacred texts, poets, and naturalists punctuate a coming of age tale contemplated in the wilderness.What follows is Part 1 of the book, squared off into four long Substack posts. For this first post, I'm also exclusively including Pacific Crest Trail Soundwalk, featuring a binaural field recording captured while hiking the first few miles on the Pacific Crest Trail up out of the Columbia Gorge in Washington. (If you haven't already, feel free to tap that play button at the top of the post.) The 26-minute composition cycles a triad of parts inspired by the letters PCT: part one in Phrygian mode (in E), part two in the key of C, and part three with Tritone substitutions. The instrumentation is outlined with Pianet electric piano, and colored in with synthesizer and intriguing pads built with a vaguely Appalachian mood in mind. It's on the quieter side, in terms of wildlife, but all in all, I think it compliments the reading. It concludes with a pretty frog chorus so, like the book, I'm making it unrestricted, in the hope of enticing some readers to stick with it to the end. If you prefer, you can find The Tread of My Soul in ebook format available for free right now on Apple Books or Amazon Kindle Store (free with Kindle Unlimited, points, or $2.99). If you read it and like it, please feel free to leave a review to help others find it. Thank you. So, without further ado, here we go:The Tread of My SoulComing of Age on the Pacific Crest Trailby Chad CrouchACT 1(AT RISE we see TEACHER and STUDENTS in an art studio. It is fall term; the sun is just beginning to set when class begins. Warm light washes the profiles of eight classmates. The wood floors are splashed with technicolor constellations of paint.)TEACHERHello. Welcome to class. I find role taking a tiresome practice so we'll skip over that and get to the assignment. Here I have a two-inch square of paper for you. I would like you to put your soul on it. The assignment is due in five minutes. No further explanations will be given.STUDENT #1(makes eye contact with a STUDENT #4, a young woman. She wears a perplexed smile on her face.)TEACHERHere you go.                                    (hands out squares of paper.)(People begin to work. Restlessness gives way to an almost reverence, except STUDENT #5 is scribbling to no end. The Students' awareness of others fades imperceptibly inward.  Five minutes pass quickly.)TEACHERTeacher: Are you ready? I'm interested to see what you've come up with.                                    (scuffle of some stools; the sound of a classroom reclaiming itself.)TEACHERWhat have you got there?STUDENT #1Well, I used half of the time just thinking. I was looking at my pencil and I thought…                                    (taps pencil on his knee, you see it is a mechanical model)this will never do the trick. The idea of soul seemed too intense to be grasped with only graphite. So 1 poked a pin sized hole in the paper and wrote:                                    (reading voice)“Hold paper up to sun, look into hole for soul.” That's all the further I got.TEACHER                                    (looking at student #2)And you?STUDENT #2                                    (smiles)Um, I didn't know what to do so all I have is a few specks where I was tapping my pen while I was thinking. This one…                                    (she points to a dot)is all, um, all fuzzy because I was ready to draw something and I hesitated so the ink just ran…(Students nod sympathetically. Attention goes to STUDENT #3)STUDENT #3I couldn't deal with just one little blank square.                                    (holds paper up and flaps it around, listlessly)So I started dividing.                                    (steadies and turns paper to reveal a graph.)Now, I have lots of squares in which to put my soul in. I think of a soul as being multifaceted.TEACHEROkay.  Thank you.  Next…                                    (looking at student #4)STUDENT #4                                    (without hesitation)I just stepped on it.(holds paper up to reveal the tread of a shoe sole in a multicolor print.)The tread of my soul.•     •     •            The writing that follows seems to have many of the same attributes as the students' responses to the problem posed in the preceding scene. While I have a lot more paper to work with, the problem remains the same: how do I express myself?  How do I express the intangible and essential part of me that people call a soul?  What is it wrapped up in?  What doctrines, ideologies and memories help give it a shape?            I guess I identify mostly with Student #4. Her shoe-print “Tread of My Soul” alludes to my own process: walking over 500 miles on The Pacific Crest Trail from Oregon To Canada in the Cascade Mountain Range in Washington. In trying to describe my soul I found that useful to be literal. Where my narrative dips into memoir or philosophy I tried not to hesitate or overthink things.  I tried to lay it all out.            Student #1's solution was evident in my own problem solving in how I constantly had to look elsewhere; into nature, into literature, and into symbology to even begin to bring out the depth of what I was thinking and feeling. Often the words of spiritual classics and of poetry are seen through my writing as if looking through a hole. I can only claim originality in where I poke the holes.            As for Student #2, I am afraid that my own problem solving doesn't evoke enough of her charm. For as much as I wanted to be thoughtful, I wanted also to be open and unstudied, tapping my pen. What I see has emerged, however, is at times argumentative. In retrospect I see that I had no recourse, really. My thoughts on God and Jesus were molded in a throng of letters, dialogues, experiences, and personal studies prior to writing this.Finally, in the winter of my twenty-first year, as I set down to transcribe this book, I realize how necessary it was to hike. Student #3 had the same problem. The soul is complex and cannot fit into a box. Hiking gave me a cadence to begin to answer the question what is my soul? The trail made me mindful. There was the unceasing metaphor of the journey: I could only reach my goal incrementally. This tamed my writing sometimes. It wandered sometimes and I was at ease to let it. I had more than five minutes and a scrap of paper. I had each step.•     •     •            The Bridge of the Gods looks like a behemoth Erector set project over the Columbia River spanning the natural border of Washington and Oregon. My question: what sort of Gods use Erector sets?  Its namesake actually descends from an event in space and time; a landslide. The regional natives likely witnessed, in the last millennium, a landslide that temporarily dammed the Columbia effectually creating a bridge—The Bridge of the Gods. I just finished reading about why geologists think landslides are frequent in the gorge. Didn't say anything about Gods. How we name things, as humankind, has something to do with space and time doesn't it? Where once we call something The Bridge of the Gods it has been contemporarily reduced to landslide. We have new Gods now, and they compel us to do the work with erector sets. Or perhaps I mistook the name: It doesn't necessarily mean Gods made it. Perhaps Gods dwell there or frequent it. Or maybe it is a passageway that goes where the Gods go. It seems to me that if the Gods wanted to migrate from, say, Mt. Rainier in Washington to Mt. Hood in Oregon, they would probably follow the Cascade Ridge down to the Bridge of the Gods and cross there.            If so, I think I should like to see one, or maybe a whole herd of them like the caribou I saw in Alaska earlier this summer, strewn across the snow field like mahogany tables. Gods, I tend to think are more likely to be seen in the high places or thereabouts, after all,The patriarchs and prophets of the Old Testament behold the Lord face to face in the high places. For Moses it was Mount Sinai and Mount Nebo; in the New Testament it is the Mount of Olives and Golgotha. I went so far as to discover this ancient symbol of the mountain in the pyramid constructions of Egypt and Chaldea. Turning to the Aryans, I recalled those obscure legends of the Vedas in which the Soma—the 'nectar' that is in the 'seed of immortality' is said to reside in its luminous and subtle form 'within the mountain.' In India the Himalayas are the dwelling place of the Siva, of his spouse 'the Daughter of the Mountain,' and the 'Mothers' of all worlds, just as in Greece the king of the gods held court on Mt Olympus.- Rene Daumal, Mount Analogue            These days Gods don't go around making landslides every time they want to cross a river, much less perform a Jesus walking on the water miracle. That would be far too suspicious. Gods like to conceal themselves. A popular saying is "God helps those who help themselves." I think if Moses were alive today, Jehovah would have him build a bridge rather than part the waters.            Someone said, "Miracles take a lot of hard work." This is true.•     •     •Day 1.Bridge of the Gods.Exhausted, I pitch my tent on the side of the trail in the hot afternoon and crawl into to take a nap to avoid the annoying bugs.My sweat leaves a dead person stamp on the taffeta floor.Heavy pack.  A vertical climb of 3200 ft.Twelve miles. I heaved dry tears and wanted to vomit.Dinner and camp on a saddle.Food hard to stomach.View of Adams and gorge.            Perhaps I am a naive pilgrim as I cross over that bridge embarking on what I suppose will be a forty day and night journey on the Pacific Crest Trail with the terminus in Canada. My mother gave me a box of animal crackers before my departure so I could leave “a trail of crumbs to return by.” The familiar classic Barnum's red, yellow and blue box dangles from a carabineer of my expedition backpack            As I cross over the bridge I feel small, the pack bearing down on my hips, legs, knees, feet. I look past my feet, beyond the steel grid decking of the bridge, at the water below.  Its green surface swirls. I wonder how many gallons are framed in each metal square and how many flow by in the instant I look?How does the sea become the king of all streams?Because it is lower than they!Hence it is the king of all streams.-Lao-tzu, Tao Teh Ching            On the Bridge of the Gods I begin my quest, gazing at my feet superimposed on the Columbia's waters flowing toward the ocean. Our paths are divergent. Why is it that the water knows without a doubt where to go; to its humble Ocean King that embraces our planet in blue? I know no such path of least resistance to and feel at one with humankind. To the contrary, when we follow our paths of least resistance—following our family trees of religion, learning cultural norms—we end up worshipping different Gods. It is much easier for an Indian to revere Brahman than it is for I. It is much easier for me to worship Christ than it is for an Indian. These paths are determined geographically and socially.             It's not without trepidation that I begin my journey. I want to turn from society and turn to what I believe to be impartial: the sweeping landscape.            With me I bring a small collection of pocket books representing different ideas of the soul. (Dhammapada, Duino Elegies, Tao Teh Ching, Song of Myself, Walden, Mount Analogue, and the Bible.) It isn't that I want to renounce my faith.  I turn to the wilderness, to see if I can't make sense of it all.            I hike north. This is a fitting metaphor. The sun rises in the east and arcs over the south to the west. To the north is darkness. To the north my shadow is cast. Instinctively I want to probe this.•     •     •Day 2.Hiked fourteen miles.Three miles on a ridge and five descending brought me to Rock Creek.I bathed in the pool. Shelves of fern on a wet rock wall.Swaths of sunlight penetrating the leafy canopy.Met one person.Read and wrote and slept on a bed of moss.Little appetite.Began another ascent.Fatigued, I cried and cursed out at the forest.I saw a black bear descending through the brushBefore reaching a dark campsite.            I am setting records of fatigue for myself. I am a novice at hiking. Here is the situation: I have 150 miles to walk. Simple arithmetic agrees that if I average 15 miles a day it will take me 10 days to get to the post office in White Pass where I have mailed myself more food. I think I am carrying a sufficient amount of food to sustain my journey, although I'm uncertain because I have never backpacked for more than three consecutive days. The greatest contingency, it seems, is my strength: can I actually walk 15 miles a day with 60 pounds on my back in the mountains? Moreover, can I continue to rise and fall as much as I have? I have climbed a vertical distance of over 6000 feet in the first two days.            I begin to quantify my movement in terms of Sears Towers. I reason that if the Sears Tower is 1000 feet, I walked the stairs of it up and down almost 5 times. I am developing a language of abstract symbols to articulate my pain.            I dwell on my condition. I ask myself, are these thoughts intensified by my weakness or am I feeding my weakness with my thoughts?            I begin to think about God. Many saints believed by impoverishing their physical self, often by fasting, their spiritual self would increase as a result. Will my spirit awake as my body suffers?            I feet the lactic acid burning my muscle tissue. I begin to moan aloud. I do this for some time until, like a thunderclap, I unleash voice in the forest.            I say, "I CAN'T do this,” and "I CAN do this," in turn. I curse and call out "Where are you God? I've come to find you." Then I see the futility of my words. Scanning the forest: all is lush, verdant, solemn, still. My complaint is not registered here.And all things conspire to keep silent about us, half out of shame perhaps, half as unutterable hope.- Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies            I unstrap my pack and collapse into heap on the trail floor, curled up. I want to be still like the forest.            The forest makes a noise: Crack, crack, crack.            I think a deer must be traversing through the brush. I turn slowly to look in the direction of the sound. It's close. Not twenty yards off judging from the noise.            I pick myself up to view the creature, and look breathlessly. It's just below me in the ravine. Its shadowy black body dilates subtly as it breathes. What light falls on it seems to be soaked up, like a hole cut in the forest in the shape of an animal. It turns and looks at me with glassy eyes. It claims all my senses—I see, hear, feel, smell, taste nothing else--as I focus on the bear.And so I hold myself back to swallow the call note of my dark sobbing.Ah, whom can we ever turn to in our need?Not angels, not humans and already the knowing animals are aware that we are really not at home in our interpreted world.- Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies            Remembering what I read to do when encountering a bear, I raise my arms, making myself bigger. "Hello bear," I say, "Go away!"            With the rhythm of cracking branches, it does.•     •     •Day 3.Hiked thirteen miles.Descended to Trout Creek, thirsty.Met a couple en route to Lake Tahoe.Bathed in Panther Creek.Saw the wind brushing the lower canopy of leaves on a hillside.A fly landed on the hairs of my forearm and I,Complacent,Dreamt.            I awake in an unusual bed: a stream bed. A trickle of clear water ran over stones beneath me, down my center, as if to bisect me. And yet I was not wet. What, I wonder, is the significance of this dream?            The August sun had been relentless thus far on my journey. The heat combined with the effort involved in getting from one source of water to the next makes an arrival quite thrilling. If the water is deep enough for my body, even more so:I undress... hurry me out of sight of land, cushion me soft... rock me in billowy drowse Dash me with amorous wet...- Walt Whitman, Song of Myself            There is something electrifying and intensely renewing about swimming naked in a cold creek pool or mountain lake.I got up early and bathed in the pond; that was a religious exercise, and one of the best things I did. They say that characters were engraven on the bathing tub of King Tching-thang to this effect; "renew thyself completely each day; do it again and again and forever again."- Henry David Thoreau, Walden            Is bathing, then, a spiritual exercise?            When I was baptized on June 15, 1985 in the tiled pool of our chapel in the Portland suburbs, I thought surely as I was submerged something extraordinary would happen, such as the face of Jesus would appear to me in the water. And I did do it—I opened my eyes under water— but saw only the blur of my pastor's white torso and the hanging ferns that framed the pool. I wondered: shouldn't a ceremony as significant as this feel more than just wet? I'm guessing that most children with exposure to religion often keep their eyes open for some sort of spectacular encounter with God, be it to punish or affirm them. (As a child, I remember sitting in front of the television thinking God could put a commercial on for heaven if he wanted to.)            Now, only ten years after I was baptized, I still keep my eyes open for God, though not contextually the same, not within a religion, not literally.            And when I swim in a clear creek pool, I feel communion, pure and alive. The small rounded stones are reminders of the ceaseless touch of water. Their blurry shapes embrace me in a way that the symbols and rites of the church fail to.I hear and behold God in every objectYet I understand God not in the least.-Walt Whitman, Song of Myself            And unlike the doctrines and precepts of organized religion, I have never doubted my intrinsic bond to water.And more-For greater than all the joysOf heaven and earthGreater still than dominionOver all worlds,Is the joy of reaching the stream.- Dhammapada, Sayings of the Buddha•     •     •Day 4.Hiked fourteen miles. Climbed to a beautiful ridge.Signs, yellow and black posted every 50 feet: "Experimental Forest"Wound down to a campground where I met three peopleAs I stopped for lunch."Where does this trail go to?" he says. "Mexico," I say."Ha Ha," says he.Camped at small Green Lake.            My body continues to evolve. My hair and fingernails grow and grow, and right now I've got four new teeth trying to find a seat in my mouth.            I turned twenty-one on August sixth. On August sixth, 1945 a bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. The world lost more people than it made that day. When I was born, I suspect we gained a few.            I'm an adult now, and I'm not sure where it happened or why. I wonder if someone had to stamp something somewhere because of it? A big red stamp that says "ADULT".  It was a blind passage for me—just like those persons who evaporated at ground zero on August sixth, 49 years ago.            I do feel like I just evaporated into adulthood. I am aware of the traditional ceremony of turning twenty-one. Drinking. Contemporary society commemorates becoming an adult with this token privilege. Do you have any idea how fast alcohol evaporates? I am suggesting this: One's response to this rite rarely affords any resolution or insight into growth. Our society commemorates the passage from child to adult with a fermented beverage.            I wanted to more deliberate about becoming an adult. Hence the second reason (behind a spiritual search) for this sojourn into the wilderness. I took my lead from the scriptures:And he was in the desert forty days... He was with the wild animal and the angels attended him.- Mark 1:13            Something about those forty days prepared Jesus for what we know of his adult life.I also took my lead from Native Americans. Their rite of passage is called a vision quest, wherein the youth goes alone into the depth of nature for a few days to receive some sort of insight into being.            I look around me. I am alone here in the woods a few days after my birthday. Why? To discover those parts of me that want to be liberated. To draw the fragrant air into my lungs. To feel my place in nature.…beneath each footfall with resolution.I want to own every atom of myself in the present and be able to say:Look I am living. On what? NeitherChildhood nor future grows any smaller....Superabundant being wells up in my heart.- Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies•     •     •Day 5.Hiked to Bear Lake and swam.Saw over a dozen people. Eighteen miles.Watched raven fly from tree and listened.Found frogs as little as my thumbnail.Left Indian Heaven.            Surprise.  My body is becoming acclimated to long distance hiking. I know because when I rest it is a luxury rather than a necessity.            The light is warmer and comes through the forest canopy at an acute angle from the west, illuminating the trunks of this relatively sparse old growth stand. I am laying on my back watching a raven at his common perch aloft in a dead Douglas fir.            It leaps into its court and flap its wings slowly, effortlessly navigating through the old wood pillars. The most spectacular sense of this, however, is the sound: a loud, slow, hollow thrum: Whoosh whoosh, whoosh....  It's as if the interstices between each pulse are too long, too vacant to keep the creature airborne. Unlike its kind, this raven does not speak: there are no loud guttural croaks to be heard.            Northwest coastal tribes such as the Kwakiutl thought the croaks of a raven were prophetic and whoever could interpret them was a seer. Indeed, the mythic perception of ravens to be invested with knowledge and power is somewhat universal.           My raven is silent. And this is apt, for I tend to think the most authentic prophecies are silent, or near to it.Great sound is silent.- Lao Tzu, Tao Teh Ching            The contour of that sound and silence leaves a sublime impression on me.•     •     •Day 6.Hiked twelve miles.Many uphill, but not most.Met several people.One group looked like they were enjoying themselves—two families.I spent the afternoon reading my natural history book on a bridge.Voles (forest mice) relentlessly made efforts to infiltrate my food bag during the night.            I am reading about how to call a tree a “Pacific Silver Fir” or an “Engelmann Spruce” or “Western Larch” and so on. If something arouses my curiosity on my walk, I look in my natural history book to see if it has anything to say.            Jung said, "Sometimes a tree can teach you more than a book can."            Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha was enlightened beneath a fig tree.            I read that a 316-year-old Ponderosa Pine east of Mt. Jefferson bears scars from 18 forest fires. Surely that tree taught us one thing a book couldn't.  All things are clues. Everything is part of a complex tapestry of causality.            The grand design behind these mountains has something to do with plate tectonics. Beneath me the oceanic plate is diving beneath the continental at twenty to sixty degrees putting it well under the coastline to where it partially melts and forms magma. This has been happening for millions of years. Every once and a while this magma channels its way up to the surface, cools and turns into igneous rock. Again and again, this happens. Again and again, and yet again until a mountain is made; a stratovolcano.            Meanwhile, on top, water, glaciers, wind, and sun are trying to carry the mountains away grain by grain. Geologic time is as incomprehensible as it would be to imagine someone's life by looking at his or her gravestone. These mountains are gravestones.            Plants fight to keep the hillsides together. Plants and trees do. But every summer some of those trees, somewhere, are going to burn. Nature will not tolerate too much fuel. New trees will grow to replace those lost. Again and again. Eighteen times over and there we find our tree, a scarred Ponderosa Pine in the tapestry.            And every summer the flowers will bloom. The bees will come to pollinate them and cross-pollinate them: next year a new color will emerge.            And every summer the mammals named homo-sapiens-sapiens will come to the mountains to cut down trees, hike trails, and to put up yellow and black signs that read Boundary Experimental Forest U.S.F.S. placed evenly 100 yards apart so hikers are kept excessively informed about boundaries.            Here I am in the midst of this slow-motion interplay of nature. I walk by thousands of trees daily. Sometimes I see just one, sometimes the blur of thousands. It is not so much that a tree teaches me more than a book; rather it conjures up in me the copious leagues of books unwritten. And, I know somewhere inside that I participate. What more hope could a tree offer?  What more hope could you find in a gravestone?•     •     •Day 7.Hiked twenty miles in Alpine country near Mt Adams.More flowers—fields of them. Saw owl. Saw elk.Wrote near cascading creek.Enjoyed walking. Appetite is robust.Camped at Lave Spring.Saw six to ten folks.Didn't talk too much.            Before I was baptized, during the announcements, there was a tremendous screech culminating in a loud cumbf! This is a sound which can be translated here as metal and glass crumpling and shattering in an instant to absorb the forces of automobiles colliding.            In the subsequent prayer, the pastor made mention of the crash, which happened on the very same corner of the chapel, and prayed to God that He might spare those people of injury.            As it turns the peculiarly memorable sound was that of our family automobile folding into itself, and it was either through prayer or her seat belt that no harm came to my sister who was driving it.            Poor thing. She just was going to get some donuts. Do you know why? Because I missed my appointment with baptism. There is time in most church services when people go to the front to (1.) confess their sin, (2.) confess their faith in Christ as their only personal savior, and (3.) to receive Him. This is what is known as the “Altar Call”. To the embarrassment of my parents (for I recall the plan was for one of them to escort me to the front) the Alter Call cue—a specific prayer and hymn—was missed and I sat expectant till the service end. The solution was to attend the subsequent service and try harder.            I don't recall my entire understanding of God and Jesus then, at age eleven, but I do remember arriving at a version of Pascal's reductive decision tree that there are four possibilities regarding my death and salvation:1. Jesus is truly the savior of mankind and I claim him and I go to heaven, or2. Jesus is truly the savior of mankind and I don't claim him and I end up in hell, or3. Jesus isn't the savior of mankind and I die having lived a somewhat virtuous life in trying to model myself after him, or4. Jesus isn't the savior of mankind and I didn't believe it anyhow.            My sister, fresh with an Oregon drivers license, thought one dose of church was enough for her and, being hungry, went out for donuts and failed to yield.Cumbf!            Someone came into the chapel to inform us. We all went out to the accident. The cars were smashed and askew, and my sister was a bawling, rocking little lump on the side of the street. We attended to her, calmed her, and realized there was yet time for me to get baptized. We went into the church and waited patiently for the hymn we had mentally earmarked and then I was baptized. I look back on the calamities of that day affectionately.Prize calamities as your own body.- Lao Tzu, Tao Teh Ching            Those events that surrounded the ritual decry a ceremony so commonplace one often misses the extraordinariness of it; of humanity; the embarrassment of my parents; the frustration and impetuous flight of my sister; and the sympathy and furrowed brow of our pastor. These events unwind in my head like a black and white silent film of Keystone Cops with a church organ revival hymn for the soundtrack.  There was something almost slapstick about how that morning unfolded, and once the dust had settled and the family was relating the story to my grandmother later that day, we began to find the humor in it. Hitting things and missing things and this is sacred. All of it.Because our body is the very source of our calamities,If we have no body, what calamities can we have?- Lao Tzu, Tao Teh Ching            Most religions see the body as temporal and the soul as eternal. Hence, 13th century monks cloistered themselves up denying their bodies space and interaction that their souls might be enhanced.            I see it this way: No one denies their bodily existence, do they? Look, your own hand holds this book. Why do you exist? You exist right now, inherently, to hold a book, and to feel the manifold sensations of the moment.            If this isn't enough of a reason, adjust.            I've heard it said, "Stop living in the way of the world, live in the way of God."            My reply: "Before I was baptized, I heard a cumbf, and it was in the world and I couldn't ignore it.  I'm not convinced we would have a world if we weren't supposed to live in the way of it."Thanks for reading Soundwalk! This is Part One of my 1994 travelogue-meets-memoir The Tread of My Soul. This post is public so feel free to share it.Read: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4. Or find the eBook at Apple Books or Amazon Kindle Store. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chadcrouch.substack.com/subscribe

Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Ellen Reid’s work spans opera, film scoring, avant-pop, and more. A new album, Big Majestic, collects work from Ellen Reid SOUNDWALK, a famed public art project reimagining urban parks as interactive soundscapes that not only travel through ambient, jazz, and minimalism, but has been featured in legendary places like New York’s Central Park, LA’s Griffith Park, as well as Tokyo’s Ueno Park. Let’s check out the heady sound of “Spiritual Sun,” featuring a star of the jazz scene, Shabaka Hutchings, on the shakuhachi flute. 

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit chadcrouch.substack.comFor our last soundwalk we are returning to the banks of Onion Creek, taking in McKinney Falls and environs in SW Austin. It's been a whirlwind four stop soundwalk tour of greater Austin, TX. Spring mornings in this part of the country are hard to beat! McKinney Falls lies within a 641 acre state park where Onion Creek plunges over amphitheater-like lim…

In this episode of Reverberations, we feature Ellen Reid's "Big Majestic," which originated from Reid's "Soundwalk," a multi-year sound installation that has traveled to city parks around the world. The album version of "Big Majestic" has been reimagined to provide a different sonic experience. Host Majel Connery and Reid discuss the genesis of the project, its evolution over time, Reid's approach to creating music that interacts with the environment, and the key collaborators involved. This album is a joint release by New Amsterdam and Eclipse Projects.Support the Show.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit chadcrouch.substack.comWe have decamped from the inner rings of Austin to the suburb of Round Rock, TX. It's April 7th, 2023. When I'm scouting a map for a good place to record a soundwalk, I look for trails through natural areas that have some sort of buffer in the way topography or distance from highways and arterial roads. In Round Rock, one of those places is the Brushy Creek Regional Trail, and the buffer, as it turns out, is the enormous property on which was built the Kalahari Resort, presently America's largest indoor water park. How big? The resort compound boasts a total of 1.5 million square feet of indoor space. The water park is 223,000 sf with 30 water slides and 20 pools. The hotel has 975 rooms and suites. The site also boasts an 80,000 sf adventure park, a 200,000 sf convention center, a 10,000 sf shopping area, 20 dining outlets, and a spa & salon. It is a small encapsulated city.Now, I'm not here to judge Kalahari Resort. Well, maybe a little. I mean it strikes me as kind of a landlocked cruise ship, recalling in some respects the Axiom Space Cruiser from the movie Wall-E, with its always-72˚ razzle-dazzle cocooned-ness, but I haven't been there, and I happen to have fond memories of water parks. When I was in the 6th grade I travelled with my dad to Orlando, Florida. It was the only flight I was took as a child. Disneyworld and EPCOT were fun, but Wet'n'Wild, one of the country's first modern water parks, really excited me and captured my imagination.Back to the soundwalk. I was strolling along the paved path, and I glanced over in the direction of the creek canyon. Under a flimsy wire fence, a storm…a stormwater chute? a stormwater channel? A steep concrete stormwater slide-thing led down to smooth rocky basin that Brushy Creek meandered through. I skittered carefully down the slide and was transported to a magical place. The light glittered on the riffling water. A Snowy Egret stood sentinel. Cardinal song ricocheted off the stone walls. I couldn't help but feel like I walked into a superior water park, admission-free. I mean it wasn't a thrill ride, obviously, but it engaged my senses, and offered its own kind of thrills. Now if I told you that clip was from a national park, would you question it? I mean c'mon. It's glorious! It's priceless! And it its hidden between the nation's largest water park and a suburban development.I love finding these overlooked spaces: undeveloped, sometimes difficult to access, tucked into the fabric of our civilizations. I encourage you to look at maps of your own region for quirky public spaces that might offer a sense of refuge and discovery in the midst of so much sprawl. Lastly, a word about the music. The backbone of the arrangement is a wobbly, stylized Wurlitzer electric piano. Plucky (mandolin, zither, “Panjo”) and fuzzy (synthesizer) sounds are latched to this scaffolding in turns. Some parts are sparser than others. Generally speaking it's all melodic, sometimes concretely, sometimes vaguely.This was a very memorable walk and I'm happy to share it with you! Thanks for listening. Brushy Creek Soundwalk is available on all streaming platforms (Spotify, Apple, Tidal, Amazon, YouTube…) Friday, August 2nd.

In this episode, we explore the lush landscapes and serene whispers of CosRica'sa's Volcan Tenorio. Experience the bubbling hot springs and high winds, revealing the enchanting secrets of this volcanic paradise. Perfect for nature lovers and adventure seekers alike. This is an original recording by Millie Wissar. If you're enjoying this podcast, show us your love by supporting us on Spotify and Ko-fi! Every donation helps us keep this project running and bringing the world's natural delights to you. Become a monthly supporter on Spotify for as little as $4.99/month: ⁠https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/happy-listening-project/support⁠ Make a donation through our Ko-fi page: ⁠https://ko-fi.com/happylisteningproject⁠ Thank you, and Happy Listening! --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/happy-listening-project/support

We are in Austin, TX again, at Onion Creek Metropolitan Park on a mild spring morning. It's April 5, 2024. Onion Creek Greenway Trail follows a large “S” curve along Onion Creek on the semi-suburban south side of Austin, Texas. Located about two miles from the closest strand of Austin's web of highways, it is one of the more serene riparian destinations within the city limits. It's a popular place to walk dogs or go for a jog. The trailhead I arrived at even had a barista / food cart. Getting off the main trail will afford the visitor a quiet, intimate experience with the creek and wildlife. There's a fair amount of human history here too if you know where to look, dating back thousands of years to the El Camino Real period and presence of Coahuiltecan Native Americans.Onion Creek Metropolitan Park owes its existence to a more recent history of ill-fated development and flood events culminating in The Halloween Flood of 2013: Austin received over 10 inches of rain during a single 24-hour period. Onion Creek rose by 11 feet in a mere 15 minutes and eventually hit an all-time high of 41 feet (topping a 1921 record by three feet). Water coursed through it at twice the velocity of Niagara Falls—enough to easily topple houses and trees, and move multi-ton objects like boulders and automobiles. The Halloween flood killed five people and damaged over 1,200 houses.The houses that once stood in the area were demolished but a patchwork of “ghost streets” that once served them remain, offering visitors a view of the slow process of residential re-wilding (and/or recreational redevelopment). Unlike the ghost towns of the previous century, which were built to extract one local resource, these ghost streets may offer a window into the future, where residential areas are abandoned after flood events owing to more frequent and intense storms, or erosion from sea level rise, or conversely, water scarcity making some places simply too impractical to inhabit.It's a reminder to live in the moment, to cultivate non-attatchment to things, and consider the adaptive strategies of wildlife. Despite its origin near the site of a

I had scheduled this for the U.S. July 4th holiday tomorrow, but I'm second-guessing that now and pressing send with unrestricted access. Perhaps this can offer some counter-programming to the sometimes overbearing or militant sounds of fireworks, or be a balm to those who are traveling and might feel unsettled right now.Why not make it a two-fer? I also just shared a spacious dawn chorus soundscape field recording I made recently at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.For the next four installments of Soundwalk we are traveling to Texas in the springtime. After several soundwalks with sparse birdsong, I'm ready for migration sounds. How about you?Texas hill country in springtime is pretty great. The morning air is mild and sweet. The birdsong is exotic to my western North American ears. Flowers are in bloom. I get the draw. I wasn't missing cold, rainy Oregon that morning.Barton Creek Greenbelt is in the inner rings of southeast Austin, TX, but it feels like a world apart from the city. Sure there's the hum of the highway that's not far off, but it's pretty easy to tune out, and in some reaches of the canyon, altogether missing.I visited April 4th. There was no water in the creek bed due to ongoing drought conditions, but the shrubs and grasses were spring green amongst the canopy dominated by live Oak. The lack of water in the soundscape gave the bird and insect sounds more presence. For a lot of songbirds in North America there are western and eastern analogues. Eastern Wood-Pewee: Western Wood Pewee, Carolina Chickadee: Black-capped Chickadee, Carolina Wren: Bewick's Wren. What the west does not have is its own version of the Northern Cardinal. (We also don't get Grackles and lots of other widespread eastern birds.) The Northern Cardinal is just such a superstar of the bird world. It's a noteworthy absence. The closest thing we have to the Cardinal might be the Lazuli Bunting, a distant cousin in the cardinalae family. Like the Northern Cardinal, the male is painted vibrantly. Instead of crimson, it has a sky-blue hood that dazzles the eye. But it's not really a backyard bird, so it's observed less frequently. Furthermore, its repertoire of songs and calls is limited in comparison, and a bit busy-sounding. There's a lot going on in this soundscape, but the Northern Cardinal, I would say, is really the star of the show with its sweet cheer, cheer, cheer and birdie, birdie, birdie layering on from many coordinates.My instrumental score is dominated by a Wurlitzer electric piano, leaving room for the avian frequencies throughout. Gauzy strings and synth layers sweep in and out with watercolor broad-strokes. Occasional glockenspiel and zither offer some filigree. It's a good introduction for what's to come, and brings me joy to share it with you! Thanks for reading and listening!Barton Creek Soundwalk is available on all streaming platforms (Spotify, Apple, Tidal, Amazon, YouTube…) Friday, July 5th. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chadcrouch.substack.com/subscribe

Well friends, we've come to the end of another chapter in our Soundwalk journeys. For our final installment in the series on Mount Hood—Oregon's tallest stratovolcano (at 11,249')—we are taking in Larch Mountain.While technically just outside the confines of the Mount Hood National Forest, Larch Mountain offers a gorgeous view of Wy'east, the Native American name for Mount Hood.Right? Oh man, what a beauty!It was an interesting confluence of events that drew me out to Larch Mountain on Oct 31, 2023. It was the last day to drive the road up there before it closed for the season. Also, I was peripherally aware that Grey-crowned Rosy Finches were spotted in the area; a rarity for the county. Mind you, I never heard of Grey-crowned Rosy Finches until a couple days prior, and I'm not usually a rare bird chaser, but the time and space opened up so I drove up there.It was a beautiful partly-cloudy day. There were patches of snow on the ground; a crunch crunch under foot. So quiet!Chestnut-backed Chickadees, Golden-crowned Kinglets and a Red-breasted Nuthatches meandered through the canopy. Chipmunks chattered. Red Crossbills called out in flight. I did see the Grey-crowned Rosy Finches far below me from Sherrard Point (where I took that photo of Mount Hood) but they never got close enough for a decent photo.Larch Mountain was developed as a tourist attraction / forest service lookout in 1915 when the first tower and hiking trail were constructed. It was a hard-earned view. The 13.3 mile trail (out and back) climbed 4000 feet up from the iconic Multnomah Falls to the summit of Larch Mountain. At that time most visitors would have arrived by train to Multnomah Falls. The Historic Columbia River Highway opened to automobiles in the early 1920's. Today, while the one mile trail up to the top Multnomah Falls is bustling, the rest of the hike up, following Multnomah Creek for the most part, is serene in contrast. It was on the upper rim of this trail that I made this soundwalk. Like Timothy Lake Soundwalk, this is a very quiet soundscape. The same recommendation applies: For best results, listen with headphones, or in a quiet environment. Thanks for reading and listening. It brings me joy to share it with you!Larch Mountain Soundwalk is available on all streaming platforms (Spotify, Apple, Tidal, Amazon, YouTube…) tomorrow, June 14th. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chadcrouch.substack.com/subscribe

Next time you're on a walk, try leaving your phone and headphones at home and make what's happening around you your next playlist. This is something called a soundwalk. People can be guided through a soundwalk to slow down, become more present and begin to notice and pay attention to the interplay of sounds happening around us. To learn more about this practice and how to try it this summer, Reset spoke to Midwest Society for Acoustic Ecology's Eric Leonardson, Summer Soundwalk Series' Paige Naylor and artist Hai-Wen Lin. For a full archive of Reset interviews, head over to wbez.org/reset.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit chadcrouch.substack.comEarlier this year I shared a soundscape field recording of an American Dipper singing on the Salmon River near Mount Hood at Wildwood Recreation Site. Wildwood Soundwalk is another recording that was made on that same day, Feb 20 of this year. It captures the sounds of walking over bridges and wetland boardwalks, languorously moving past springs, creeks and seeps trickling down rock walls, and strolling alongside the Salmon River. If you like gentle water sounds, you're in for a treat. There's more water than wildlife sounds in this one.These days when I edit my Soundwalk audio, I remove airplanes, automobiles and humans. I generally do this by digitally splicing the recording. Snip, snip. I also use selective EQ filters and a cut and paste technique to remove low frequency highway or aircraft noise. Overall though, I rarely crossfade clips or deviate from the linear timeline. My hike that day took me up Boulder Ridge into the Salmon Huckleberry Wilderness. Though a couple signs warned of black bears in the area, and the scenery was lovely, this section of audio proved less interesting, so I swapped it out for the American Dipper song by the river, and let the focus be the water coursing down the hillside at the base of the ridge. I take my time here, lingering next to rivulets dripping over mossy rocks, crouching down to observe with my eyes and ears the little details of these watery vignettes.Compositionally I'm delighting in the water, selecting bouncy synthesizer patches to play off the water sounds. Stitched throughout the instrumental score is, essentially, a duet for electric piano and clarinet. It's all performed with an unrehearsed looseness, which I hope lends an unfussy, “wild” vibe. Woodwind arrangements, hushed celeste, and a variety of animated synth passages also add to the bouquet of sound. I hope you enjoy it! Wildwood Soundwalk will be available on all streaming platforms (Spotify, Apple, Tidal, Amazon, YouTube…) tomorrow May 31.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit chadcrouch.substack.comCastle Canyon is in The Mount Hood National Forest, a stone's throw from the little hamlet of Rhododendron. It isn't a what I'd call a canyon. It's a wooded ridge with some striking volcanic rock formations rising out of it. Two steep creek canyons do cut troughs in the landscape on either side of this ridge, so it's not devoid of canyons, but the “castle” bits don't mix with the canyon bits in an obvious way. The short trail that leads up to these rock pinnacles is quite steep, utilizing just a few switchbacks to climb 800 feet in less than 3/4 of a mile.The soundscape here is unique. I'd call it airy, reverberant and fuzzy. The sound of the distant tumbling creeks bounces up through the Douglas-fir and hemlock woods, mixing with the breeze playing off the leaves of alders and big-leaf maples, forming a bio-acoustic hum. Its frequency changes subtly as I climb the trail. This is not a soundwalk I would recommend listening to in the car. Its features are nuanced and easily lost in a din. I mixed the soundscape more in the foreground than in the past, embracing all that fuzzy creek sound. It's probably best experienced in headphones or a quiet environment. I've also been utilizing more of the stereo sound stage lately: placing instruments in the mix solidly in the left or right channels. After all, this is how the birdsong registers. When you listen with headphones and close your eyes you can often picture the birds in imagined space. Pacific Wrens can be heard singing and calling at different points, along with Golden-crowned Kinglets and Dark-eyed Junco. A distant Pilieated Woodpecker's laugh is heard and in the opening minutes, and midway through a raven honks and vocalizes in “subsong” (birdsong that is softer and less well defined than the usual territorial song, sometimes heard only at close quarters).My score is melodic, as always, but always rising through the scale, playing off the rising pitch and evolving timbre of the creek sounds on the climb. For the instrumentation I challenged myself to leave piano out this time. With small songbirds so prominent in the soundscape, I tend to gravitate to “smaller” sounding instrument voices: glockenspiel, circle bells, flute, wispy synths. A clarinet plays out a theme at several points. One interesting addition to the instrumentation is Joshua Meltzer's “Panjo”, a clever virtual instrument hybrid playing either baritone banjo or pan drum sounds for each note from the phrases I play on the keys. Never the same twice. It sounds like a dreamy, twangy music box.Just over a week ago I finished submitting the next dozen soundwalks to come after this one, cementing the biweekly release schedule up to December! So, I know well what is in the future for Soundwalk and I don't think it spoils any surprises to say they more or less follow the trajectory set by Castle Canyon Soundwalk. What I don't quite know is what I will create over the summer and fall, having freed up my schedule, but I'm hoping to experiment, take some risks, and branch out! In that spirit, I'll leave you with this short video of the trail to the pinnacles viewpoint at Castle Canyon. Thanks for being here. I hope you enjoy Castle Canyon Soundwalk. It will be available on all streaming platforms (Spotify, Apple, Tidal, Amazon, YouTube…) tomorrow May 17.

There's nothing dramatic about the Still Creek trail. It's basically an easy-breezy trail that heads out over a ridgeline saddle from a campground set among old-growth Douglas-fir trees and a creek in the foothills of Mount Hood. Just a walk in the woods.The most dramatic part is the beginning. Winding through the stout tree pillars, we cross the surging Camp Creek. Hence, our walk begins with a piano and woodwind fanfare. For the instrument palette I'm embracing solo clarinet and solo flute again after a years-long absence. Also glass marimba. As a performer my keyboarding style has always been loose, but on the glass marimba I go for an almost arhythmic, tumbledown effect, mirroring the creek waters.The wildlife we hear along the way are the continent's smallest songbirds: Golden-crowned Kinglets, Pacific Wrens, and Chestnut-backed Chickadees. Ironically, the little creek we hear half way through is an unnamed tributary, not Still Creek itself, which I do not lay eyes or ears on. The trail crosses over this little nameless creek in a pretty setting: crystal clear water pools against a decaying log; the waters slowly meandering through its crosscut. A still creek. This interesting little scene is what is pictured on the cover. Generally speaking, I try to pair the cover image with the mood of the music. The bright orb of the sun refracting on the water, and the warm glow illuminating the submerged fir needles seemed to match the glimmering synth pads and dark, woody piano in the score.I think the woodwinds add a romantic feel, and I have to say: it did feel romantic with the afternoon light filtering through the canopy. Not in a romance way, but in a, you know, a tender way. Just connecting with the space. Opening up to it. Feeling it. This is a good primer for our next installment, Castle Canyon Soundwalk, which is even more soundscape-forward, featuring a more impressionistic, even experimental score. Very open.For now, enjoy Still Creek Soundwalk. I love the name. (I chose this trail half just because I liked the name, and half because it wasn't covered with snow.) Thanks again for reading, for listening, for coming along this journey.Still Creek Soundwalk will be available on all streaming platforms (Spotify, Apple, Tidal, Amazon, YouTube…) tomorrow next Friday, May 3. (Oops! I forgot to update my calendar after nudging the date.) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chadcrouch.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit chadcrouch.substack.comTimberline Lodge is a historic alpine lodge constructed in the late 1930s as a project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), high on Mount Hood where the trees thin out and glaciers loom large. Its lobby is dominated by a massive, soaring stone chimney which forms the central pillar of the octagonal post and beam structure, rising some 35 feet overhead. Throughout the building are artworks and handcrafted details of a bygone era. It's a really special place to while away an hour or two. I went up there for lunch on March 19th after completing a hike lower on the mountain (soon to follow in another soundwalk). I captured a few minutes of audio by the fire and walking around inside the building with the thought that it might make an interesting addition to this Mount Hood series. The mezzanine hosts casual dining, so the ambience is similar to a cafe. Just a couple days ago news broke that a fire broke out at Timberline Lodge. The lodge posted this bulletin:On Thursday night, April 18th, at approximately 9:30pm a fire was reported at Timberline Lodge in the headhouse attic and its exterior roof area. First responders were on scene shortly thereafter, extinguishing the fire by approximately 11:00pm. There is an ongoing investigation as to the cause, but it is suspected fireplace embers ignited the roof.Smoke and fire damage remains confined to the roof, but the extent of water damage isn't clear. It is perhaps a good sign the Cascade Dining Hall, adjacent the main lobby, opened yesterday for brunch, April 21, 2024.For this vignette-length soundwalk, I worked with an instrument palette I've been favoring for recent work with an overall intent to make the score less dominant, and more spacious. I also automated some sound design EQ sweeps to focus on the sound of the smoldering fire in two passages.Thank you for being here. I hope you enjoy Timberline Lodge Soundwalk. I think it's a charming little piece.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit chadcrouch.substack.comRamona Falls lies within the Mt. Hood National Wilderness, near the headwaters of the Sandy River. Volcanic eruptions on Mt. Hood in 1780 created a mudflow. This event inspired the name of the Sandy river, as Lewis and Clark called it [in 1805], "Quicksand River." The name was later changed to the "Sandy River." The Ramona Falls was apparently named by US Forest Service worker John E. Mills in 1933. He named the falls after his late wife, Ramona. -worldatlasThe trail is a roughly seven mile out-and-back or loop option. The northernmost section, trail #797, closely follows Ramona Creek and is in my opinion the prettier and more musical option. You'll hear my feet scuffling on the coarse sand trail approaching the Sandy River crossing. I cut out the portion of audio crossing the Sandy River because—and this is not intuitive to most people—larger, fast-moving rivers are not intrinsically pleasing to listen to. They're not bad, but they tend to sound like walls of white noise, often masking wildlife sounds and the acoustics of place. They sound meh. Loud and featureless. Interestingly, because it's a wilderness area, The Forest Service doesn't maintain a bridge across The Sandy. The logic is a little convoluted, given they used to have a modular “seasonal bridge”, and there are numerous footbridges crossing Ramona Creek. It may have something to do with a tragic accident in 2014 when a hiker was swept away crossing the seasonal bridge in a flash flood event. His body was found a mile downstream. Was that bridge deemed a safety liability? I can only remember combinations of leaps and shimmying on downed logs to cross it.It must have been 2015 when I made the trip up there with my dad. He told me a story about coming upon a hiking group in distress on the trail above the falls many years before. One of their party had died on from an allergic reaction to a bee sting, of all things. I recall he spoke of spending quite a few hours helping them. I looked for a historical news article for details. I couldn't find one. The hike to Ramona Falls may be statistically safer than walking on a city street, but something about the remoteness of wilderness frames a wider existential perspective on life and death. Mountains do that. They take you out of yourself for a spell. I will always associate Ramona Falls with the last time I did a day hike with my dad. I distinctly remember the vivid colors of the moss and lichen that day. The clouds were very low and misty, diffusing the low-hanging autumn sun. It was dreamlike. Liminal.This particular day was not dissimilar. The clouds lingered, offering occasional showers, but were less prismatic in their density. Red Crossbills winged by overhead. Dark-eyed Juncos foraged on the ground and low in the canopy. Once again, I had a sustained moment with a raven. I love crossing paths with ravens. The focal point of the soundscape is largely Ramona Creek, culminating in an approach to the spectacular falls:What makes it so striking? It's not tall or awesomely powerful. It's approachable, decorated with emerald-hued moss, and often dramatically lit from rays of sun filtering through the fir trees. It's strikingly symmetrical, roughly diamond shaped, and finely textured. Its song is more music than thunder. It's just a one-of-a-kind waterfall to lay eyes and ears on, and I'm pleased to share it with you!Ramona Falls Soundwalk is available on all streaming platforms (Spotify, Apple, Tidal, Amazon, YouTube…) tomorrow Apr. 12.Lastly, if you didn't catch them, I recently posted Soundscape podcast episodes of the Total Solar Eclipse (in a stereo image featuring wildlife on the left and humans on the right), and a nice long relaxing recording I made at Pacific Beach, WA a couple weeks ago.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit chadcrouch.substack.comIt would be interesting to parse out what we call “lakes” from what are in reality reservoirs. Most of the lakes around here that come to mind are actually reservoirs. After all, natural lakes are just meadow construction sites; their inlet rivers and streams eventually convey enough sediment to fill in the lake beds. Almost all natural lakes are, in this way, ephemeral. In the years shortly before the Timothy Lake reservoir was created by damming the Oak Grove Fork Clackamas River, shepherds seeded the native mix of meadow plants in the area with Timothy Grass. Timothy Meadows became Timothy Lake, and that probably explains the circular shape of the reservoir. Most reservoirs are long and riverine, whereas Timothy is relatively round, suggesting there was a (smaller) lake basin here in the not-too-distant past.Built in the post-war era (completed in 1956) when dam building in the western United States was at a fever pitch, the Timothy Lake Dam (as part of Portland General Electric's Clackamas River Project) made all the hydro promises: renewable energy, flood control, drinking water, recreation. On the latter it delivered in spades: as the largest body of water in the Mt. Hood Wilderness, its four campgrounds and dispersed camping areas are packed to the gills come summertime. Of course there are downsides of messing with rivers, but I'm not going to get into that now, lest I become labelled a Debbie Downer.This Soundwalk captures Timothy Lake on a crisp October day, when the campgrounds are all closed and only a handful of people are inclined to visit its shores for the day. I had the lakeside trail that leads out to Meditation Point all to myself. On the water I saw Western Grebes, Common Mergansers, and I heard Common Loons in the distance. In the canopy I heard Chestnut-backed Chickadees, Red-breasted Nuthatches, Brown Creepers, Golden-crowned Kinglets, and Varied Thrushes, among others. A Raven had something to say to me about half way through, rather insistently it seemed. Above all, a pronounced and spacious quiet reigned. My score focuses on that sense of solitude and tranquility with softly played piano, bell tones, string plucks, woodwinds, and whispering synthesizers. It's certainly the reigning champ for quietest Chad Crouch soundwalk, for now.As per usual Timothy Lake Soundwalk is available on all streaming platforms (Spotify, Apple, Tidal, Amazon, YouTube…) tomorrow Mar 29th. Thank you for your support. Thank you for being here. Enjoy!

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit chadcrouch.substack.comWow. Spring seems to have sprung here in the Pacific Northwest! The birds are singing. The sun is out. And while I wasn't sure how this first soundwalk in a new series would land—given it was recorded last fall—it now seems quite timely!So, let's start with the series: Over the next ten weeks, maybe more, we will be listening to different locations in the Mt. Hood National Forest, starting with this one along the wild and scenic Salmon River, on the Old Salmon River Trail.Like me, you might ask why is it the Old Salmon River trail? Maybe Tom Kloster has the best explanation at oregonhikers.com:During the height of the post-World War II logging heyday, the Salmon River Road was built along the lower river, bypassing several miles of the old trail that once provided sole access to the upper canyon of the Salmon River. Somehow, the old section of trail paralleling the new road survived the logging era, along with some of the best old growth forests within easy reach of Portland. The trail has since been rediscovered, and once again maintained by the Forest Service for hikers looking for an easy, stream-side ramble.”Now, let me tell you why it seems timely. Firstly, just yesterday Salmon Wars, a new podcast series from Oregon Public Broadcasting and ProPublica, launched with the first two episodes (featuring original music by friends Kele Goodwin and Sean Ogilvie). Secondly, In just a couple of weeks Spring Chinook salmon will return to the lower Columbia River, as they have done for millions of years. For the soundscape recording, I do what I have done a few times in the past, mixing the ambient binaural recording (made with my recording hat) with a “zoomed in” perspective made by dangling mics close to the water and cross-fading between them to suit the sonic narrative and points of interest. (The audio in the following clips is what my phone captured.) Toward the end you can clearly hear the splashing of the salmon as they dance closer to the culmination their lifecycle. This is what that looked like: For the score I'm still digging into synth pads and drones that sound “shimmery” like the water, and warm-hued like the spawning salmon. And I'm still just working in my naive way on the piano. For the quiet “Salmon Spawning Rhapsody” passage I'm using a technique recommended to me by my friend Nick Jaina: basically parking my left hand on one or two root notes in the key while while letting the right cycle hand through a chord progression. Did he call it whole tones? Did I even understand him? Whatever the case, I like what I played. You can hear the salmon splashing for a long stretch in the last third of the soundwalk. A Cornerstone SpeciesThe Spring Chinook will travel into their home rivers and streams in the fall, the Salmon River being one of them. There they will spawn and die; their carcasses will be consumed and broken down into the ecosystem. This transfer of nutrients from the ocean to the forests is what gives salmon the distinction of being a cornerstone species. Not to put too fine a point on it, but “cornerstone” seems to be an operative and accurate description. Without salmon, natural systems break down and we all suffer. All beings.The 2024 Spring Chinook run is forecast at 121,000 fish, 80-some percent of last year's run. There are four primary salmon types in the Columbia: Chinook, Coho, Sockeye and Steelhead. I won't get too far into the weeds, but this page offers some facts and historical perspective on the basin, and here's a video on their lifecycle.The big picture view is that before Euro-Americans arrived, the Columbia River basin produced between 10 and 16 million salmon annually. The total salmon forecast for 2024 is 800,000. Putting that into perspective this chart seems to indicate that number is about average for the past 100 years or so (but worryingly, only 25% of the 2014 return). It would also suggest commercial fishing in the late 19th and early 20th century decimated Columbia River salmon!And so here we are. I'm looking forward to learning more about the subject on Salmon Wars, but even more I'm looking forward to the next time I can be out in the woods, close to these majestic creatures. I hope you enjoy Old Salmon River Trail Soundwalk, which in addition to the Soundwalk podcast for premium subscribers, will be released in its entirety to all platforms tomorrow, Mar 15th. Thank you for being here. Just one more thing: If you like what I do, please tell just one person about it, so I can continue to make connections and keep doing what I'm doing.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit chadcrouch.substack.comThe conclusion to the five-part Lower Columbia River soundwalk series brings us back to the Washington shoreline, three miles upriver from where we last visited, at a place called Frenchman's Bar. Though it takes an hour by car to drive from Willow Bar to Frenchman's Bar, they are literally just around the corner from each other on the water. And of course, this is how the birds experience it. Sandhill Cranes, Snow Geese, Canada Geese and others often overnight on Sauvie's Island and forage by day across the river in The Vancouver Lowlands. There are plenty of opportunities to capture fly-bys and fly-overs in field recordings here, but there is also plenty of competition in the soundscape from industrial sources. In addition to the planes, trains, and autos, you'll often hear hulking cargo ships chugging by. If you listen closely you'll hear a crew pounding on the hull of one such ship in the distance, close to the end of our soundwalk. I left it in, half because it was an interesting sound, and half because there's only so much noise one can get rid of without messing it up. Incidentally, I also left in the subtle sound of me setting up a stationary recording rig. I'll share that field recording next week on Soundscape, the companion podcast to Soundwalk, all linked up with this Substack newsletter. I visualize it like an H2O atom! And maybe now is a good time to catch you up, since I don't send emails as often as I'm posting. Recently I shared A Brief History of Soundwalks, taking a look at a couple examples of soundwalks, new and old, and arriving at a tentative answer to the question what is a soundwalk? (In the words of Christopher Robin, "It means just going along, listening to all the things you can't hear and not bothering.”) Also, I shared a soundwalk through the Black Artists of Oregon Exhibit at Portland Art Museum and field recordings of the charming American Dipper at Wildwood and some Trumpeter Swans and allies at Ridgefield NWR. Subscribers enjoy 5 min excerpts while premium subscribers get the complete recordings (10-90 min). Available in your podcast app and here.For the Frenchman's Bar Soundwalk score I used a lot of the same voices that we've been hearing in this batch. In particular, I try to follow the swells of sound from the abundant geese and cranes with synth pads and vibrating drones. This time I swap out the electric pianos for the intimacy and warmth of an acoustic piano and celeste. It's both quiet and loud; a dynamic outing!Frenchman's Bar was named by Donald and David Scherruble who grew up in the area, heirs to the 120 acre farm that would become Frenchman's Bar Park in the late 1990's. The Scherrubles listened to their colorful "Old Frenchman" neighbor speak of his adventures when they were kids on the farm. Don Hamilton penned this story with an ear for the brothers' lively storytelling for The Oregonian September 9, 1985:Frenchman's Bar really has a French connection. That connection is the late Paul Haury, a Frenchman who once deserted a doomed ship,Well before the turn of the century Haury, then 15, was an apprentice river pilot in France hoping to make his living on the sea. He signed on as a cabin boy on a wooden saling ship bound for Vancouver, British Columbia, via Cape Horn. It was to pick up a load of lumber and take it to the Sandwich Islands, now known as Hawaii. But the cabin boy who hoped to make his life sailng was treated poorly."He jumped ship, he did," David Scherruble said. "He used to come to the house and tell my mom and dad about how there was this big old hollow cedar tree and he hid in it while the searchers (from the ship) looked for him. They walked right past him, they did, and didn't even see him. That's the story he told."After about three days the searchers gave up the hunt for their cabin boy and set off for Hawaii. In mid-Pacific the ship hit a fierce storm and went down with all hands.For five years Haury's parents in France believed he was dead. By the time he wrote to tell them he hadn't perished, he had made his way north from Vancouver and was working as a commercial fisherman in Alaska.In 1915 Haury bought five or six acres along the Columbia and moved to the Vancouver area…Interestingly, Haury, who died in 1937 while in his 70s, never saw the stretch of beach named for him. The bar was created by dredge spoils when the Columbia River channel was deepened by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the late 1940s.It might also be worth mentioning that Frenchman's Bar is about a mile upriver from Tena Bar, which in 1980 provided a break in the infamous D.B. Cooper skyjacking mystery. A kid found $5800 in bundles of decomposing cash in the sand. Serial numbers on the bills matched those in the $200,000 ransom. (Funny how that seems like not so much today.) How did these bundles end up buried in the sand at Tena Bar? The FBI put a lot of energy into trying to answer that question but apparently few definitive conclusions could be drawn. There is absolutely no shortage of conjecture online. In 2020, a scientist ruled out quite a few timeline scenarios by testing the bills for diatoms. “Because the bills only had one season of diatoms on them, and did not have diatoms that bloom in the winter, Kaye theorizes that the money came out of the water and landed on the bank of Tena Bar after only a few weeks or months.”Today the Tena Bar area, bound by a sand and gravel company, has No Trespassing signs posted every 10 meters. Well, I guess that's about it for this one. Thanks for being here with me.

Our five-part experience on the Columbia resumes on the shoreline. We are still on Sauvie Island, walking along the beach of a wooded peninsula called Willow Bar Beach. It's a cool late October morning. The wave action is the wake of small, medium and large ocean-going ships, their lumbering mechanical sounds out of earshot on the far side of the river where the channel runs deep. The wildlife is distant so there is more room for my musical score. Consequently, almost the whole way through there are synthesizer drones that just kind of glow and oscillate slowly like embers in a fire, like the rising and falling of the water, the breaking and ebbing waves. The soundscape in our soundwalk is edited to effect a pre-industrial, quieter time. I'm very curious about that long-gone history, those old ways.A Culture Nearly Washed AwayLast time I wrote about how Sauvie Island was once a cradle of indiginous civilization, perhaps more densely populated than any other Native American site on the continent. Archeologists speculate that the Portland Basin could have once been the home of 30-40,000 Native Americans in the 1700's. When Lewis and Clark came back up the river in 1806 they estimated the Sauvie Island population of some 2400 persons, and described Multnomah as the “remains of a large nation”. This was over decade after the introduction of small pox to the region from the first white traders on the west coast. Within 30 years the island was almost entirely depopulated following waves of malaria. Nevertheless the Chinookan culture survived, and though their tribe is not federally recognized, the diaspora are alive and well with tribe members living in Bay Center, Chinook and Ilwaco in Washington state, and Astoria and Grande Ronde in Oregon, among other places.Willow Bar has only recently joined the mass of Sauvie Island. It was an island group in in the early 1900's Clan-nah-quah was the name given to a village on the south end of the channel separating Willow Bar, about a mile north of Multnomah (máɬnumax̣), the largest village on Sauvie Island.In their “Estimate of the Western Indians”, Lewis and Clark observed: “Mult-no-mah Tribe reside on Wap-pa-tow Island [Sauvie Island] in the mouth of the Multnomah [Willamette River], the remains of a large nation, 6 houses, probable number of souls, 800. Clan-nah-quah's tribe of Multnomah's on Wappato Island below the Multnomars, 4 houses, probable number of souls, 130.” The Clan-nah-quah site is now nearly all washed away, only a bank of broken camp rock on the river shore marks the place. Stone Age of The Columbia (1959)Camp rock, AKA fire-cracked rock, FCR, fire-affected rock, or FAR, is not conspicuous to most folks. It looks like ordinary rock to me. Archeologists spot it on many a Columbia River shoreline as a vestigial reminder of native peoples' inhabitation. These cracked stones and fragments are the result of years of being heated in a fire by humans for cooking and providing a longer lasting heat source. Maps seem to suggest accretion along the shoreline, not erosion, The lumpy sandy landscape near Willow Bar suggests the channel was plugged with dredge spoils sometime in the last 50 years. [Around 1960, actually.] I'm no archeologist but I'm curious to know more. I read a 2021 doctoral student's 300 page thesis project regarding Sauvie Islands' western shore, wherein the author discovered 8 unrecorded archeological sites, 3 of which were determined to have “high archeological value”. I think it's probably important to clarify here that high archeological value means in a nutshell is that the site may contain a multi-decade, or even multi-century refuse pile called a midden. When excavated carefully, a midden can tell a layer-by-layer story of the human habitation. It does not in all likelihood mean that there is a beautiful stone sculpture slumbering away in the soil. Still, Sauvie's Island has a record of artifact discovery that conjures the imagination. The Portland Art Museum mounted a show in 1952 entitled Prehistoric Stone Sculpture of the Pacific Northwest. More recently, in 2005, an even bigger collection was assembled for the People of The River exhibition. (The show produced a sizable book.) It's more or less a once in a generation event to see these sculptures in one room. Hence, the story of the Native American artists of Sauvie Island, and more generally the Chinookan tribes of the Lower Columbia is not well known.Of course, in piecing together the story, it doesn't help that early settlers and relic hunters plundered sites, hoarding and selling artifacts to private collectors before laws prohibited such activity on public lands. Assembling enough pieces from institutional and private collections to mount an exhibition is a daunting task.An interesting story, which reads like lore, comes from amateur archeologist Emory Strong:There is an interesting and well authenticated story about one of the collections made on Sauvies Island. One of the early settlers built his home on the deserted site of one of the larger villages. In clearing the land numerous artifacts were found, and the wash from passing steam-boats and the yearly flood eroded more from the banks.This man picked up and saved the best of them and eventually accumulated a large collection of exceptionally fine stone and bone carvings and chipped pieces. Growing old and not wanting his collection to become dispersed, and as there was then no local museum to donate it to, he buried it in one of his fields. There it yet lies, the best single private collection of Indian work in the west. Some day it may again erode from the bank. Stone Age of The Columbia (1959)Hmm. Not sure how much stock to put into that. On a somewhat related note, though, just a couple days ago I saw this stone bowl on display at the Grande Ronde Chachalu Museum and Cultural Center:There were several very old baskets and woven pieces, three small possibly pre-contact carvings on display, but this was the only larger stone sculpture piece on display. I asked the woman at the front desk about it. She said it was found at a dump. Huh? She didn't have any other details to offer. But as I thought more about it, there was a village site on the Columbia Slough near the old St. Johns Landfill in north Portland (now capped with a prairie habitat). Could that be the dump in this story? Or perhaps it was a variation on the old an it fell off the back of a truck line accompanying repatriation of an illegally collected relic? A mystery… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chadcrouch.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit chadcrouch.substack.comOn February 1st I took in the dual exhibition Africa Fashion & Black Artists of Oregon at the Portland Art Museum. I have to admit it was a darned good idea, particularly on First Thursday when the museum offered free admission. It was a nice change of pace for an outing, and the place was hoppin'! At 10am there was a line of 50 or so folks cued up, and before long high schoolers on a field trip were streaming in. The exhibits were terrific.I keep my binaural recording headphones in my coat pocket, and though I had no intention to make any recordings there, the chatter was so bubbly and reverberant, I thought it might make for an interesting sound portrait. It's worth pointing out that I'm mindful to avoid eavesdropping in a situation like this; instead, aiming for the macro effect, a murmuration of voices.As I often do, I used post production edits to accentuate moods and textural shifts. I was going to incorporate percussive rhythm in the compositions, but abandoned that as it started to feel a bit dominant and busy. The instrumentation is very much in line with my sound palette of late. The bright zither plays against the low tones of the Wurlitzer electric piano in a way I really like. Synthesizers add texture and atmosphere.For about a decade, from 1997 to 2007 or so, I identified primarily as a visual artist; a painter, to be precise. I worked in batches. I exhibited in mixed-use spaces: coffee joints, restaurants, furniture stores and home goods boutiques. One of the series that I became know for was a simple, flat figurative style. Think Jacob Lawrence meets Alberto Giacometti. In the early years the figures were uniformly dark red in color, and were always painted without facial features. I have continued to create work in this vein for the nonprofit Friends of The Children for over 25 years now. For the last 15 years they are the only client I continue to break out the brushes for.Well, back in 1997 I had one of the mentors (“friends”) stop by my studio on NE MLK Jr. Boulevard with a couple younger girls (who were black). When one of them rounded the corner and got one look at me her eyes widened, her mouth formed an O, and she covered her mouth with her hand. She thought she was coming to see a black artist! (I am white.) I will never forget the look on her face. She could not disguise her shock that artist behind the paintings she had seen was white. I laughed, but was a little thrown off by it. I don't really recall the details of our conversation, but the experience stuck with me. It's not really a story I've told before, but it I turned it over in my mind. This exhibition, and the large photo wallpapered on the museum wall (on the album cover) reminded me of that experience.Some years later, for a number of reasons, I began painting different skin tones rather than the default dark red. Admittedly, in retrospect I preferred the red, which harkened back to the inspiration for the style: sculpting with red clay.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit chadcrouch.substack.comFor an in-depth introduction to this soundwalk, please visit my blog post.

This episode presents the raw Soundwalk field recording only, captured May 22, 2023 in NE Colorado. To hear the complete Pawnee Grassland at Dawn Soundwalk album by Chad Crouch (inclusive of the original musical score) find it wherever music streams, or on Bandcamp: artist.link/chadcrouch Meanwhile, as I consider whether this is a podcast format worth continuing please feel free to share any thoughts you might have at podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/soundwalk

In this special encore edition of Making Contact, we present Saltwater Soundwalk: Indigenous Audio Tour of the Seattle Coast. Produced by Jenny Asarnow and Rachel Lam, this rhythmic, watery audio experience, streams of stories that ebb and flow, intermixing English with Coast Salish languages. Indigenous Coast Salish peoples continue to steward this land and preserve its language, despite settler colonialism, industrialization, and gentrification. Part story, part sound collage, this piece is scored entirely with the sounds of the waters and animals who live in and around the Salish Sea. The post Saltwater Soundwalk: Indigenous Audio Tour of Seattle (Encore) appeared first on KPFA.

In this special encore edition of Making Contact we present “Saltwater Soundwalk”: Indigenous Audio Tour of the Seattle Coast. Produced by Jenny Asarnow and Rachel Lam, this rhythmic, watery audio experience, streams of stories that ebb and flow, intermixing English with Coast Salish languages. Indigenous Coast Salish peoples continue to steward this land and preserve its language, despite settler colonialism, industrialization and gentrification. Part story, part sound collage, this piece is scored entirely with the sounds of the waters and animals who live in and around the Salish Sea.  Like this program? Please show us the love. Click here: http://bit.ly/3LYyl0R and support our non-profit journalism. Thanks! Featuring:  Voices in order of appearance: Water at Don Armeni Boat Ramp Randi Purser Smith (Suquamish) Archie Cantrell (Puyallup) Southern Resident Orcas Plainfin Midshipman Fish Ken Workman (Duwamish) Michelle Myles (Tulalip) LaDean Johnson (Skokomish) Owen Oliver (Quinault/Isleta Pueblo) RYAN! Feddersen (Colville) Warren King George (Muckleshoot) Lydia Sigo (Suquamish) Water at Gas Works Park, Lake Union Water at Kayak Point Regional County Park Birds and Water at Puyallup River Eric Autry Birds and Water at Erlands Point Water in Pacific Ocean, La Push Birds and water at Potlatch State Park, Hood Canal Jeanne Hyde Joseph Sisnero  Produced by: Rachel Lam (Anigiduwagi enrolled Cherokee Nation) and Jenny Asarnow Special Thanks: Commissioned with SPU 1% for Art Funds. Administered by the Seattle Office of Arts and Culture. City of Seattle, Bruce Harrell, Mayor. This episode of Making Contact was supported in part by a Moral Courage grant from the Satterberg Foundation. Credits: Local artists and producers, Rachel Lam (Anigiduwagi enrolled Cherokee Nation) and Jenny Asarnow produced this work as part of FLOW: Art Along the Ship Canal, a commission from Seattle Public Utilities in partnership with the Office of Arts & Culture. Making Contact Staff: Jina Chung, Executive Director; Interim Senior Producer, Jessica Partnow. Producers: Anita Johnson; Amy Gastelum; Lucy Kang; and Salima Hamirani. Web Updates: Sabine Blazin. Music: Last Kiss - Magnus Moone Audiobinger - Enchanted Forest  Learn More:  Seattle Times - https://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/how-you-can-explore-seattles-waterways-with-saltwater-soundwalk/ Art Beat Blog - https://artbeat.seattle.gov/2022/08/25/new-podcast-saltwater-soundwalk-highlights-the-people-land-and-water-of-seattle/ Saltwater Soundwalk - https://saltwater-soundwalk.simplecast.com/ Making Contact is a 29-minute weekly program committed to investigative journalism and in-depth critical analysis that goes beyond the breaking news. On the web at www.radioproject.org.

Strange Boy - Emma Talbot -Timescapes Soundwalk - Orfhlaith Foyle

A special edition of Soundwalk with source audio captured 10 days before the catastrophic Lahaina fire on Maui, Hawaii. I'm sharing this as part of a fundraising effort for Maui.

This week, Jim DeRogatis and Greg Kot dissect D'Angelo's masterpiece album Voodoo. They chat with author Faith Pennick about the record's context, impact and more. Then, the hosts will talk with the bassist who played on that album, among many others, Pino Palladino. Join our Facebook Group: https://bit.ly/3sivr9TBecome a member on Patreon: https://bit.ly/3slWZvcSign up for our newsletter: https://bit.ly/3eEvRnGMake a donation via PayPal: https://bit.ly/3dmt9lUSend us a Voice Memo: Desktop: bit.ly/2RyD5Ah  Mobile: sayhi.chat/soundops Featured Songs:D'Angelo, "One Mo'gin," Voodoo, Virgin, 2000D'Angelo, "Playa Playa," Voodoo, Virgin, 2000D'Angelo, "Chicken Grease," Voodoo, Virgin, 2000D'Angelo, "Brown Sugar," Brown Sugar, EMI, 1995D'Angelo, "Devil's Pie," Voodoo, Virgin, 2000D'Angelo, "Untitled (How Does It Feel)," Voodoo, Virgin, 2000D'Angelo, "Africa," Voodoo, Virgin, 2000D'Angelo, "The Root," Voodoo, Virgin, 2000Pino Palladino & Blake Mills, "Just Wrong," Notes With Attachments, Verve, 2021Pino Palladino & Blake Mills, "Off The Cuff," Notes With Attachments, Verve, 2021Paul Young, "Come Back and Stay (Extended Version)," No Parlez, Columbia, 1983D'Angelo, "Send It On," Voodoo, Virgin, 2000D'Angelo, "Feel Like Makin' Love," Voodoo, Virgin, 2000The Who, "Baba O'Riley (Live at the Hollywood Bowl 2002)," Who's Next, Decca, 1971The Who, "My Generation," My Generation, Brunswick, 1965Pino Palladino & Blake Mills, "Soundwalk," Notes With Attachments, Verve, 2021Pino Palladino & Blake Mills, "Ekuté," Notes With Attachments, Verve, 2021D'Angelo, Femi Kuti, Macy Gray, and the Soultronics, "Water No Get Enemy (feat. Nile Rodgers and Roy Hargrove)," Red Hot + Riot: The Music and Spirit of Fela Kuti, MCA, 2003John Mayer Trio, "Who Did You Think I Was (Live at the House of Blues, Chicago, Illinois, September 22, 2005)," Try! Live in Concert, Columbia, 2005Low, "Long Way Around the Sea," Christmas, Kranky, 1999