Soundwalk

This post originally introduced the pseudonym Crou, which I quickly abandoned, given the name already had multiple artist profiles on streaming services, and I realized a lot of people rely on voice commands to play music in the car and at home. “Crou” made that difficult.

My usual approach angles don’t seem to apply here. This is something new. This is Sleeping Animal.

I think I’m going to script a conversation, à la NPR. Bear with me. Here goes:

What is Sleeping Animal?

Well, Sleeping Animal was a name I landed on a while ago, because I thought it sounded warm, contented, and vulnerable. It’s something I want be a placeholder for a side project that isn’t fully defined. It’s also apropos of not including environmental sound, as if the animals were all sleeping.

You just spun off Listening Spot, right?

Yes, and I actually used those words, even though they’re giving gimmicky energy. Listening Spot and Sleeping Animal, and some of the others that have come before could have been projects released under the name Chad Crouch, but I’m already pushing it when it comes to having a “right-sized” release catalog.

Is there anything different about the music?

Yes. There are no field recordings with Sleeping Animal. There is more room for more instruments and layers in the arrangements. And, there is, for now, a hint of vocals… Otherwise, pretty similar, really.

Anything else?

Hmm… I’ve really been enjoying old photographic images; glass plate negatives, sepia-toned silver gelatin prints; that kind of thing. Might be a visual direction for the project. It is for this release!

The debut release Coots by Sleeping Animal is available on all music streaming sites (Spotify, Apple, Amazon, Tidal, etc.) Friday, February 28th.

Earlier this week: Reflecting on some formative listens.

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 Rock

Consider 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 Coffin

The 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 Rock

To 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 …

Just a quick refresher: My Listening Spot series features one long, stationary environmental recording with a bespoke ambient composition. Peaceful, atmospheric, ambiguous. You’re invited to press play and read on!

Ah, the South Pacific. Hawaii. The Big Island. It conjures all kinds of idyllic images, sounds, and fragrances: romantic sunsets, palms gently swaying in the tropical breeze, the sound of birdsong and tumbling surf, the fragrance of Plumeria wafting through the air…

Reality is often different. The traveller may encounter the glaring midday sun, the roar of landscaping machinery, the buzz of AC units, the fragrance of exhaust as vehicles vie for parking at popular beaches.

Is paradise a myth? Why is it so tantalizing?

Airbnb will let you allow the traveller to filter accommodations down to the amenity of a hair dryer, but offers little help in for finding a quiet place to stay. Analyzing maps is often more helpful than parsing descriptions.

I was grateful to find a sleepy 1960’s era condo resort in Keauhou, tucked away from the highway, for our family summer vacation. This soundscape was recorded in the dawn hours of an August morning last year. A little slice of deep island quiet.

I’m no Hawaii bird expert but I think what we are hearing is the gentle dawn song of Java Sparrows, a bird native to the islands of Java and Bali—where it is now rare—and introduced to Hawaii and elsewhere.

It’s possible there’s Warbling White-eye or Saffron Finch chiming in, but it’s all new to me, honestly.

The composition is a little different than my standard fare. There’s a synth pad built from cricket sounds, and there’s another synth pad that has a unique choral timbre… The reverb is bigger, and the harmonic complexity is pushing my comfort zone. That is to say, there’s some dense chords being played here—minor 9th chords, suspended 4ths, and so on—often blurring from one to the other. I’m kind of a lightweight when it comes to harmonics that introduce tension, but I’m curious. All in all, it’s very peaceful and reflective, but also bittersweet; like a Mona Lisa smile painted in sound waves. For an environmental recording from paradise, it’s not exactly what I would call “escapist”.

Thanks for reading and listening. I’m grateful for your interest. Island Dawn Suite is available under the artist name Listening Spot on all streaming platforms (Spotify, Apple, Tidal, Amazon, YouTube…) Friday, February 7th.

I 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, 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 Watching

Here Nick Zenter explains the Copalis Ghost Forest with excellent visual storytelling (but you may want to skip the 30 second intro).

Nothing like a trip to the ocean to start a new year! I feel so fortunate to live just over an hour away from one of the most beautiful coastlines on this planet.

This recording was made at Yoakam Point, near Coos Bay Oregon, about 4 hours down the coast. It’s a uniquely beautiful sounding surf here, I have to say.

And you might think to yourself, all beaches sound nice, Chad. And well, it would be hard-hearted of me to try to argue with you on that point. They all do sound nice, but some just sound more nice. The tuning here must have something to do with the rocks that reach into the ocean lake a giant hand, as if playing the surf like so many harp strings.

The scarp ridges reflect the sound waves of the tumbling surf like a giant instrument, but not in a way that sounds like mush. The contours are clean and the details are sharp.

If you listen closely you’ll hear the distant moan of a fog horn on the low end (though I did soften it considerably with a low scoop EQ) and the peals of Pigeon Guillemot on the high end of this soundscape.

Now if you’re like me, you might wonder, why is it called “Yoakam Point”? And, if you’re like me, not finding an answer at the ready makes this one of life’s little mysteries that needs to be solved. I expected it to be named for some ship captain or crew mate. If not that, then certainly a white man, probably a pioneer or politician, or both.

So, wading through numerous Google results for modern country singer Dwight Yoakam, I finally chanced upon a couple fascinating stories tracing the Yoakam surname in Coos County. And, to my surprise these stories enobled no man, but spoke to the perseverance of two generations of Yoakam women. How refreshing!

Tragedy of the Burning Tree

In 1855 newly arrived settlers Eliza and John Yoakam lost five daughters to a tree aflame falling on their home, as detailed in this 1906 obituary:

In 1855 they moved to a homestead about six miles from Empire City on [what] is now known as the Cammon wagon road.

It was here that the awful tragedy of Mrs. Yoakam’s life occurred—one that would only be possible in pioneer days, when a large, burning tree fell with terrific force upon their little cabin, shattering it and instantly killing five of their children, one a babe in its mother’s arms. The accident happened in the evening, when the children were nearly all asleep, and when later the anguished parents searched amid the ruins of their little ones, they found four of them dead where they had slept.

Two little boys, Jasper and George, aged 7 and 5 years, still missing, were found in their little trundle bed alive and fast asleep. The branches of the tree had fallen in such a manner as to shield their little bed, and the commotion had not even awakened them. The scene of the accident is known as Yoakam’s Hill, and stately firs, spreading cedars the graceful rhododendron now grow in wild luxuriance where these hapless children lie in their dreamless sleep.

The homestead was abandoned, as the poor mother could find no happiness there, and after a few sad months in Empire City and Eastport, they moved to the Coquiller River, where they remained until 1867, when they bought the William Jackson farm on South Coos River, and literally hewed for themselves a home out of the wilderness. In this home probably the happiest years of Mrs. Yoakam s life were spent; other children came to her almost empty arms, and listening to their happy laughter, her old sorrow gradually faded away. For many years “Yoakam’s” was synonymous with good cheer and hospitality.

Mrs. Yoakam was a woman of rare type, well fitted by nature for the struggles and adventures of pioneer life. Mr. Yoakam died in 1876, and for many years his widow successfully managed the farm, failing health finally compelling her to leave it.

She was the mother of twelve children, five of whom survive her. (Coquille Herald)

One of her children, George Yoakam, died in 1901, gored by a neighbor’s wayward bull, leaving his wife Sarah, three daughters and a son. Taking a page from her mother-in-law, Sarah successfully managed the family farm in the wake of the tragedy.

Sarah Yoakam Forges Ahead

That a woman can conduct a dairy farm most successfully is nicely proved in the case of Mrs. Sarah Yoakam of Coos county, near Marshfield, Ore., whose husband, a prominent rancher, was killed by a vicious bull some thirteen years ago. In the years Intervening since she and her two daughters have conducted and developed the dairy business in which her husband was engaged. For a good share of the time they have done all the work on the farm, including the care of the dairy herd and the securing of the farm crops. (Union Star)

Indeed Sarah not only succeeded on her farm, but went on to become a leader in the trade.

Sarah Yoakam, who ran her husband’s Coos County dairy upon his death seven years earlier, was voted the first female vice-president of the Oregon State Dairyman’s Association. The next year she became the superintendent of the Dairy Department of the Oregon State Fair. (cooshistory.org)

Now, how exactly this headland came to be known as Yoakam Point is not crystal clear. The acreage was one of 19 locations purchased by the state in 1968. The state wayside simply carried over the accepted name. Oregon Geographic Names suggests the name was in use for “many decades” prior to 1952, attributed to the pioneer family:

For many decades this name has been applied to a small promontory about a mile west of Coos Head just south of the entrance to Coos Bay. It commemorates a family well known in the history of the county. (Oregon Geographic Names, 1952)

Mussel Reef

I think it’s important to include the settler prehistory here. Before the name Yoakam Point gained acceptance among the settlers of the area, it seems like “Mussel Reef” was in play. The area was inhabited by the Coos people from time immemorial. This particular shoreline was an abundant intertidal zone rich with mollusks and crustaceans used for both food and regalia. Sites of archeological importance are documented here.

A half mile west of Yoakam Point, sits Chiefs Island, on which stands the defunct Cape Arago Lighthouse. The island was repatriated to the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw in 2013. That site contains a very large, deep midden, indicating an extended presence on the island. It is closed to the public.

Coos Bay was a distinctly rich cultural area prior to Euro-American settlement. it brought together five tribes speaking as many different languages (or dialects) within short distance each other: Miluk (Coos), Hanis (Coos), Quuiich (Lower Umpqua) Nasomah dialect (Lower Coquille) and Athabaskan (Upper Coquille).

Noting the abundant natural resources and prospects for establishing a port, early settlers converged on the peninsula in the center of the bay, incorporating the town of Empire City next to a Miluk village, about 10 miles inland from Yoakam Point. Empire City is today the Empire neighborhood of the city of Coos Bay. Within just a few years of the first settlers arriving, the tribes were forcibly removed and eventually relocated to the Siletz Agency of the Coast Reservation. Like most treaties in the west, promises were broken when the US congress systematically failed to ratify them.

Thanks for reading and listening. I’m grateful for your interest. Coast Headland Suite is available under the artist name Listening Spot on all streaming platforms (Spotify, Apple, Tidal, Amazon, YouTube…) Friday, January 17th.

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 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 basalt 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.