People have a lot of excuses for going out into nature.
Folks will climb 14,000 foot peaks in order to ski down them.
They will spend months in the woods to shoot a single turkey.
They will suspend themselves from cliff faces to get a picture of a waterfall or a nest.
And, apparently, they will drive to hell and back and sit for hours swarmed by mosquitos in order to get audio tape of birds, or wind, or wild sheep on the hill.
The clip above, is about Gordon Hempton, a man who has been recording nature sounds in Washington state for more than 25 years. Another clip from a docmentary about his work is here, and there is a very nice clip of John Hartog recording nature sounds in Oregon here.
Great stuff, but I am not sure capturing the sound, or the picture, or the critter is all or even most of the reason why people spend so much time in the woods.
Yes, we go out and come back with our little trophies of things caught, captured and achieved, but in the end aren't we all just trying to find a little peace and quiet, and aren't we all trying to connect to that inner hunter; that child like sense of wonder that comes when we find a true sense of scale; a reminder of how small -- and how large -- we are in the scope of things?
The human need to be in the woods and to explore, to seek out and find is deeply coded in our genes.
Our code explodes when we are outside, every bit as much as the genetic code inside a Pointer does when it smells the wet feathers of a quail tucked inside a patch of weeds on a drizzly morning.
When the dogs and I head down a hedge, we are recapitulating the oldest relationship man has on earth, that between the human and the wolf. This is not new, this is old, and it is coded in our bones at a level Watson and Crick could not imagine.
But is it any different for the sound hunter, who is listening to nature, or the photographer who is watching it, or the dedicated birder who hopes to add another "life bird" to his tally? I do not think so. Whatever this is all about, it is deeply coded.
.
Folks will climb 14,000 foot peaks in order to ski down them.
They will spend months in the woods to shoot a single turkey.
They will suspend themselves from cliff faces to get a picture of a waterfall or a nest.
And, apparently, they will drive to hell and back and sit for hours swarmed by mosquitos in order to get audio tape of birds, or wind, or wild sheep on the hill.
The clip above, is about Gordon Hempton, a man who has been recording nature sounds in Washington state for more than 25 years. Another clip from a docmentary about his work is here, and there is a very nice clip of John Hartog recording nature sounds in Oregon here.
Great stuff, but I am not sure capturing the sound, or the picture, or the critter is all or even most of the reason why people spend so much time in the woods.
Yes, we go out and come back with our little trophies of things caught, captured and achieved, but in the end aren't we all just trying to find a little peace and quiet, and aren't we all trying to connect to that inner hunter; that child like sense of wonder that comes when we find a true sense of scale; a reminder of how small -- and how large -- we are in the scope of things?
The human need to be in the woods and to explore, to seek out and find is deeply coded in our genes.
Our code explodes when we are outside, every bit as much as the genetic code inside a Pointer does when it smells the wet feathers of a quail tucked inside a patch of weeds on a drizzly morning.
When the dogs and I head down a hedge, we are recapitulating the oldest relationship man has on earth, that between the human and the wolf. This is not new, this is old, and it is coded in our bones at a level Watson and Crick could not imagine.
But is it any different for the sound hunter, who is listening to nature, or the photographer who is watching it, or the dedicated birder who hopes to add another "life bird" to his tally? I do not think so. Whatever this is all about, it is deeply coded.
.
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