This soundwalk concludes a short series from the Redwood Coast of Northern California, including the Substack-only Fern Canyon Soundwalk, as well as Grove of the Titans Soundwalk and Preston Island Soundwalk.

Brown Creek Trail was the clear winner on the Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park trail map for soundwalkin’. It runs parallel to the busy scenic parkway, with a ridge rising up between the two, acting and sound baffling. It’s probably one of the quieter options in the park. The creek adds to the relaxed atmosphere, and draws in the birds. I loved this hike.

I’m going to drop this Steinbeck quote again, because I think it bears repeating:

"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 Steinbeck

It’s so true. I actually took more videos than photos on this hike. (The quote applies to video too. you can’t successfully make a video of a redwood tree.) I captured short clips out of habit, thinking they would lend themselves to Spotify “Clip” content. I used to do this for a while; add little video clips to all my tracks, just on that platform. It was tedious, but I rationalized it was a nice portal into visual world of the soundwalk, and I thought it maybe it would put me in the good graces of the algorithm. It didn’t seem to move the needle in that regard.

Then I started questioning how it changed a listener’s relationship to the music, seeing an <8 second video loop over and over. Further, I noticed the user interface incentivized interaction with these clips, with an animated rectangle at the top of an album track list.

For me, because the tracks are invariably longer than the video clips, it just made feel less relaxed, and more aware of the skip button. This is not what I wanted to facilitate, so I don’t do it anymore.

So, no videos in this post either. Same reason. I want to facilitate settling in. Closing eyes. Letting the mind wander. Basking in the sound, not the pixels.

I was with my family on this walk, lagging behind just out of earshot much of the time. This was a “working vacation”, while out on some quiet trails.

There is a short spur loop trail in the middle of this valley, leading visitors by many outsized redwoods, named after founding fathers of American forestry. And I thought it was just birds that were given honorific names. Generally speaking I’m not in favor of naming birds and trees after people, but I’ll go along with the quote on the plaque at the entrance: Forestry is a good thing but love is better.

Speaking of loops, we went for the loop hike option which added some elevation gain on the South Fork Trail. Soon we were seeing the trees from a different point of view.

I read a trail user’s review that resonated with me. “This trail could be called ‘The Circle of Life trail’. Everywhere there is death of the forest but new life growing from it,” she wrote. It’s astounding how regenerative these ecosystems are.

The music is about what you might expect from me. The tempo is slow and measured. Arrangements are minimal; a string of duets for the most part. There are some droney passages. I like this one. It’s my hope it can be of some use to you. Thanks for listening and reading along with me here!

Redwood Soundwalk is available on all music streaming services today, May 2nd.

Decay is a natural process. It breaks down structures, so that new ones can form. Decay is also the attenuation of a sound over time.

Bearing this in mind, it is also the name of a new work I’m pleased to share with you, from my strictly instrumental project, Sleeping Animal.

Here I step away from his my field recording gear in an effort to evoke nature with instruments alone. Electric piano holds the center, while a blurred mix of synthesizers, vocals and ambient strings fill out the mix. The composition unfurls, loosening and coalescing many times over its short runtime of 14 minutes. Is it an album or an EP? What is a song, really? I sometimes ask myself. Maybe I’m just at a point in my life where the song as a structure is both less appealing and penetrating as it once was, on both the listening and composing side. Decay is tenuous and exploratory; a string of impressions, a meandering of attention akin to what one feels when walking along a trail. No verse, chorus, bridge here. It’s more about flow and sequence. I’m interested in mirroring structures in nature, inscrutable at the glance, but held in exquisite tension.

Decay by Sleeping Animal is available on all music streaming platforms today, Friday, April 25th.

Thank you for you for listening and reading. If something brings you enjoyment, please share my work with one other person. Word-of-mouth is fundamental to my ability to persevere.

The monochrome cover art photo was taken while hiking the Wildwood Trail recently, which played an important role in refining aesthetic decisions for Sleeping Animal releases, both musically and visually. This post goes into that.

And 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!

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