What a Magical Time of Year!

What a magical time of the year. As we approach the winter solstice, here in the north, the morning sun is sluggish to appear, twilight extends into the day and when the sun does appear, it creeps slowly along the southern horizon peeking through bare tree branches. The light is a golden hue, the same that you see in the fashion photos. And it lasts almost all day, except for a few hours near noon. Here the effect lasts 20 days, centered on the solstice December 21st.

What a magical time of the year!

A thick powdery blanket snow that covers everything is full of glistening sun sparkles which adds to this mystical feeling. These pinpoints of sparkles are always changing, moving in random currents, as they lead the eye this way and that, they are always in focus because of their singularity, but never fixed in position. The sharp sunshine courses through the crusty crisp winter air conferring precisely detailed horizons. The blending blues of the winter sky, unparalleled in clarity and intensity, deepest at the zenith, extend to the horizon. The winter quiet is punctuated by Raven.

What a magical time of the year!

The extra long winter nights mark a time when the whole infinite universe opens up. The still, frosty air causes the stars to appear brighter and they seem closer with their delicate colors more apparent. The constant flow of constellations, and the occasional shooting star, emphasize the vast periods of night silence. The wolves signal their approval.

What a magical time of the year!

Ethereal sun dogs hover through the afternoon giving angelic rainbow wings to the golden sun. The crystalline snow mirrors the blues from the sky above in the long winter shadows, contrasting with the smooth shining brilliance of the sunlit snow. The evening sunsets last forever, as the snow reflects a rainbow of hues. Sunsets linger, and linger, as if even the sun realizes the daily visit has been short.

What a magical time of the year!

The real magic is here…
outside…
join us…

Winter recordings:
Some winter sounds at Nature Sounds.ca:
Boreal Winter Birds
Late Winter Wilderness
Windy Woodpecker


Karl Hamilton BFA
Nature Sounds.ca
www.naturesounds.ca
Nature Sounds Downloads
Nature Sounds CDs
Nature Sounds Videos

Overcoming the Challenges of Winter Recording

The cold temperatures and deep snows of winter create unique challenges to recording nature sounds. Cold temperatures effect the operation of equipment. LED Readouts, energy of batteries, solid state memory response are all affected by temperature. The operator must be dressed for the weather. As well, movement through deep snow and setting up equipment on deep snow requires special considerations. The final results are worth the time and energy.

Advice to someone who has never done winter work in the country before…. Try it in small steps. Start with short outings and fine-tune your clothing first. The old adage of dressing in layers is true, which means when you buy your outer coat, allow room for layers of an extra shirt and sweater or a coat underneath. If you are buying a parka, buy a long one that goes down to mid thigh, has a hood lined with a soft insulating material, and has the outer pockets lined with a similar material. The fur trim (real or fake) that you often see on the edge of the hood is not just for looks. It functions as an extra wind break and helps to create an insulating dead-air space in front of the face. The fur around the top edge of winter boots provides a natural flexible seal (no pun intended) against the legs to keep snow from getting in the boots.

All this preparation by going outdoors is great for your recording activity. You can research likely recording spots by visiting different areas at different times of day. Birds tend to be more active at sunrise even in the winter. There tends to be a lull in human generated noise at noon hour. Dress not only for the weather but also for your activity level. Over dressing for your activity means you will sweat, and wet clothing in winter chills you quickly.

The winter temperatures have an effect on electronic memory and LED displays. Displays become very slow or unresponsive when they get chilled and memory becomes temperamental as well. I use hand warmers that hunters use to provide a heat source, and wrap the equipment in a towel for insulation. They are thin, compact, last 8 hours, and are the perfect size. Batteries lose their energy in the cold, so I use an external 12 volt power pack that has lots of reserve power.

The snow quickly gets deep here after winter starts. By deep I mean over the top of boots. Walking off any roads requires snowshoes, and snowmobiles are useful only on packed trails. A trail can be broken with the old style of snowshoes. I find that walking out and back on the snowshoes, waiting for it firm up overnight, and doing that again, produces a solid trail that you can walk on with normal boots. That is when I use a sled and malamute to move equipment in and out of the bush to record winter sounds. The sled stays at the recording location to hold the recording equipment and supplies. Since my goal is to have at least 1 hour and hopefully 2 hours of finished ambience, I record at least 3 to 4 hours in the natural setting. I leave the recording area so that the wildlife can relax without a human presence.

Some winter sounds at Nature Sounds.ca:
Boreal Winter Birds
Late Winter Wilderness
Windy Woodpecker
Raven Winds His Clock

The activity of winter recording provide a number of interesting challenges that need to be overcome. The results are wonderful and unique recordings with very clean sounds.


Karl Hamilton BFA
Nature Sounds.ca
www.naturesounds.ca
Nature Sounds Downloads
Nature Sounds CDs
Nature Sounds Videos

The Relaxing Silence in the Woods

Nature for the most part is pretty quiet. The exceptions to this rule are large events: storms, migrating birds, floods, earthquakes, and eruptions. But for the most part, mother earth is a quiet gentle place. Someone once wrote to me that it was the silence between the sounds that was the most healing, which is an interesting thought, because we tend to automatically focus on the events we hear, and that reflex causes us skip over giving our attention to the silences.

My most quiet memory goes back to when I was outside walking in a wooded valley. It was winter. Snow was falling. Nighttime. No breezes just calm. Big fluffy flakes were floating down and covering everything. There was no sound. I stopped and listened... Except for falling snow and me, nothing moved. It was so quiet I could hear my heart beating. I could hear the blood circulating in my ears! I started to walk slowly, almost daintily, so as not to change the feeling, the environment. The Silence in the Woods. It was a wonderful night just like reading a Robert Frost poem. It really is something you cannot capture or record, bottle, or box and sell, because if you had a completely silent room lined with several inches of fluffy white stuff - then you would almost have it.

However complete silence is not automatically the most relaxing situation. Finding complete silence is so rare, that it seems to be more of a “special event”. That is, it becomes something to experience, explore and note. I guess having more elements of familiarity is a requirement of deeper relaxation. The more peaceful sounds have some tangible sound or sounds for the mind to focus on. Silence does play a role, by creating spaces between the sounds, and thus creating a very slow tempo. One sound comes to mind that is created by a large lake on a very calm day. A large body of water always has a slight undulation to its surface, even on a perfectly calm day. That slow undulation creates a swishing and sizzle as it caresses a sandy beach. Add some heat, and sunshine… and that is the scene where I recorded Whispering Waves. A free sample and more information is here.

Another relaxing sound is bird songs. There are many different birdcalls ranging from single chirps and peeps to never-ending long soliloquies. I am thinking of the type of call that has a pure musical quality that engages, and then is separated by rhythmic periods of silence. I went deep in the northern woods far away from human habitation to record such a sound. The sound is a beautiful musical trill that is repeated about ten seconds apart. It is part of a recording called Boreal Forest Birds. More information and a free audio sample is here.

Having regular periods of silence creates tempos. And slow tempos have been shown in experiments to create physical relaxation responses. The heart beats slower and breathing and respiration slows. The beauty of nature sounds is that there is variability in nature that creates Rhythmic Randomness. It is this quality that potentially creates deeper relaxation, and it is why nature sounds are especially effective. For more information about rhythmic randomness, please see Friday October 16, 2009 in this blog.

Karl Hamilton BFA
Nature Sounds.ca
www.naturesounds.ca
Nature Sounds Downloads
Nature Sounds CDs
Nature Sounds Videos