Hello. It’s 2025. How can that be? I look at the number and think, that’s a futuristic number. Wasn’t the future supposed to be easier? Something tells me 2025 will not be easy. Still, I’m determined to meet it with can-do attitude.

For now though, let’s ease into it. With that it mind I chose this recording, Forest Stream Suite. The environmental sound was captured last June in Forest Park, Portland, Oregon; a place we’ll be revisiting throughout the coming year.

Many of the seasonal streams were, by that time, down to a trickle. The percussive sound at the top of the recording is one such a trickle, a thread of water falling over a stone, as captured by a homemade hydrophone.

The hydrophone is a simple design incorporating a ~$1 bulk-supply 27mm contact mic, a kombucha bottle screw cap, a coin (for ballast), a 1/8th inch stereo cord, a swatch of duct tape, and a couple dips in liquid plastic. I was instructed in the ways of DIY contact mic wizardry by the gifted sound artist Marcus Fischer at a workshop hosted by Oregon Contemporary about a month prior. Thanks Marcus and Oregon Contemporary!

Hydrophone recording is something I hope to do more of in the coming year. Maybe I’ll invest in something a little more sensitive. Or possibly a stereo pair?

The instrumentation follows the pattern of previous Listening Spot releases: One continuous field recording and several distinct musical movements in the same key. With the hydrophone click track as a jumping-off point, this one is reaches out its sound tentacles in new directions, without letting go of the familiar.

There’s some of my favorite wildlife belting it out here: American Robin, Pacific Wren, Wilson’s Warbler, Yellow Warbler… While listening, I can picture the dappled light of the forest.

Thanks for tuning in. I’m grateful for your interest. Forest Stream Suite is available under the artist name Listening Spot on all streaming platforms (Spotify, Apple, Tidal, Amazon, YouTube…) Friday, January 3rd. I hope you can spend some quiet time with it.

Lastly, I took some time to write some reflections on my first year of being on Substack a couple days ago. I didn’t send it out as a newsletter, because it was mostly written as an exercise to clarify some things for myself. I’m mentioning it here for those who may be curious about the platform, my impressions as a musician, and some intentions in 2025. Happy New Year!

Welcome 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 Lighthouse

The 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 Woes

Warrior 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 Sale

In 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 Company

Many 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)

Conclusion

And 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.

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.

Time now for Listening Spot. This is the third effort filed under the self-describing pseudonym, with the recipe being a long field recording accompanied by a number of musical movements comprising a greater whole. Put simply, it’s just meant to be more dreamy.

For this outing we have left the Columbia River, and the Wapato Valley (aka Portland Basin), where we have settled in for a few months. (But barely, we’re not officially done here. There’s two more installments over the next two weeks.) Oaks Bottom is a mixed wetland on the Willamette River in Portland, about 10 river miles from the Columbia confluence, and the southern edge of Wapato Valley. In some ways it approximates what the Columbia shorelines would have looked like 100 years ago: marshy wonderlands where cottonwood trees thrive.

Oaks Bottom was my go-to destination for many years. I became quite familiar with the soundscape over time. I can usually identify the wildlife there by ear. If listening back to a recording I can tell you what season it was made, down to the month. My favorite season: Spring. It’s the best.

In this recording we hear the Black-headed Grosbeak. Instantly, that places it in the likely realm of May or June.

The sound of the cottonwood trees is another hint. In May, the leaves are young and pliant. By June they are big and broad, clattering in the breezes. Here is an excellent video on the sound of Cottonwood leaves.

Even in winter cottonwood leaves continue have their own sound—underfoot. Where other leaves—maples for example—now have the consistency of tissue paper on the moist ground, cottonwoods scrape against each other like coated cardstock valentines. Scrunch, scrunch. Scriff, skrich.

I think that’s it for this one. Cottonwoods Suite is available on all streaming platforms (Spotify, Apple, Tidal, Amazon, YouTube…) Friday, December 6th. I hope you can spend some quiet time with it.

I’m trying something new: a short-form twist on my soundwalk formula, folding in my photography. So here is a pilot episode of sorts. I hope you enjoy this little string of impressions in sound and vision.

Go on and hit that play button above. Let’s see what we can see, and hear what we can hear.

It’s a densely overcast morning. As soon as I hit the trail, I’m checking out a Townsend’s Chipmunk. It’s smaller than my hand, munching on a seed, I think. Do you hear the click-click-click-click? That’s my camera. That’s the sound it makes when I want to take pictures in low light without a tripod. It takes multiple shots and stitches them together. The chipmunk is still, and then poof it’s gone.

It rained all night long. The trees are saturated and dripping.

Little streams and rivulets course down the upper reaches of Balch Creek Canyon. I love listing to their ephemeral burble. Across the canyon, the tops of Douglas-fir emerge from the mist. The hillside is breathing.

I’ve been on a mushroom kick, so I’m scanning the stumps and nurse logs on the side of the trail. I see a slug munching on fungi. A petit dejeuner.

I hear Golden-crowned kinglets up in the canopy, and a Pacific Wren chipping over the rise.

I’ve come back down to the Wildwood Trail. It’s an easy stroll here as it rounds the contour of the Tualatin mountains above the upper reaches of these NW Portland neighborhoods built out in the early 1900s. The din of highway 30 and the NW industrial park washes up these slopes. The train whistles are ghostly, bouncing off the fir colonnades. Look, rays of sunlight are breaking through.

On one of these firs I spy Fairy Parachutes (Marasmiellus candidus) nestled in the saturated moss. I can’t think of a more perfect, evocative name for these. The diameters of these are less than a dime’s. These are the only ones I find today.

On a nearby stump I see a similarly very delicate duo. Like so many, I can’t identify it. Do you know?

Around the corner I spy a coral fungus (Clavulina coralloides). It’s about two inches tall. Not big. I set my camera down in the duff to capture this angle, and it appears bigger. Click-click-click-click.

I’ve been hearing Red-breasted Nuthatches up high in the canopy. Their calls sounds like little clown shoes on parade to me. Honk honk honk. The only bird that I attempt to photograph, other than some Dark-eyed Juncos is this Brown Creeper.

Brown Creepers always climb up tree trunks, and they are very on task, so you’ll often get good looks at them in the forest. What does it have in its beak?

Brown Creepers have one of the sweetest songs. Trees, trees, beautiful trees they sing in a pitch so high that many a septuagenarian (age 70+) can no longer hear them. With that in mind, I try to savor their singing when it’s quiet.

On the north side of the rise, I now see the firs and ferns backlit by the rays of sun breaking through. They glisten with a million raindrops clinging to them, like so many berries.

This purple capped mushroom on the side of the trail is coated with bits of soil from the barrage of the morning rain. It stretches out above the fir cones like a battle-worn survivor.

Nearby I find this scene and try to puzzle out a scenario from the forensic evidence. I don’t get far, but the words “string cheese incident" pop into my head, and I visualize a squirrel.

One thing that quickly becomes clear about fungi photography is the extent to which it’s difficult to communicate scale. These are miniscule, testing the limits of my camera.

I identify them as belonging to the large Mycena genus, commonly known as bonnets. Wikipedia says:

Mycenas are hard to identify to species and some are distinguishable only by microscopic features such as the shape of the cystidia. Some species are edible, while others contain toxins, but the edibility of most is not known, as they are likely too small to be useful in cooking.

and..

Over 58 species are known to be bioluminescent, creating a glow known as foxfire.

I wonder if these guys glow?

As I work my way back, I’m struck by how everything looks a little different with the sun being a few degrees higher on the horizon. Late-morning light. Time to head home.

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.

Today 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!

I love oak trees. Here in the Pacific Northwest, our western forests are dominated by conifers, so oaks have something of an exotic look to my eye. It wasn’t always this way.

Here in the Willamette Valley, oaks thrived in the rain shadow of the Coast Range. The entire 1.5 million hectare valley was not long ago dominated by native prairies and oak savannas.

This is one of the most strongly human-modified ecoregions on the continent, with an estimated 99.5% decline of native prairies and oak savannas. Despite this devastating loss, the vegetation of this region and its history are fascinating, and the remaining remnants are often packed with rare and endemic species. (oneearth.org)

In the last 175 years we have lost 98% of the oak savanna habitat here.

(From: Rivers to Ridges Oak Habitat Flyer)

It’s not lost on me that, just a 30 minute trip from my home, a 100 acre oak savanna on Sauvie Island is a pretty special place. Not just because it’s scarce habitat, but also because it’s very tranquil, buffered from road and city noise by placid lakes and distance. So we’re back, visiting Oak Island, the “island” within an island:

This time I pointed my most sensitive mics (a Rode NT-1 stereo pair in ORTF placement) toward the long axis of the woodland, recording a detailed, spacious soundscape. One can walk around the margins of this woodland on the Oak Island Nature Trail, but there are actually no trails through it. It really preserves a sense of mystery about it, I have to say. You are an outsider looking in, here.

Oak Savanna Suite is the second in a new series of more calm, more atmospheric, more classically ambient releases collected under the pseudonym artist name Listening Spot.

As with the first release, Crane Lake Suite, Oak Savanna Suite is a group of self-contained instrumental movements of varying character in the same key. The instrumentation sounds vaguely orchestral, like a pastorale with flowing legato phrasing, but it’s less melodically rigid, and not built up with traditional orchestral instrument sounds.

In fact, in the beginning it’s difficult to discern basic musical patterns: Meter is elastic, melodic phrases are indistinct and unrepeated, and the music barely rises above the soundscape. All this changes by degrees as the suite progresses. I hope you get to spend some quality time with it.

If you enjoy it, please follow Listening Spot wherever you get your music, and consider sharing it with one other person. I’m heartened by the initial response, but also aware of the challenge of building momentum for a new thing, so I’m grateful for any support you can offer.

Oak Savanna Suite is available on all streaming platforms (Spotify, Apple, Tidal, Amazon, YouTube…) tomorrow, Friday, November 8th.

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…)

We’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: