“Placing the pile of pads & lists back on the table, & shaking myself out like a wet dog, I reach for the door handle, pull, and step out onto the back porch for air. The day is mild, & a mountain mist hangs low, muffling the crevices of spring run-off into a soft roar. What amazing, complex emotions sounds make us feel, I think, as we bounce back & forth between the digital and the real - an ever blurring line. How similar, yet different, just like people. My impulse to record natural sounds is strong. Yet why not ... just experience things directly? Of course I do, which creates a bond, which creates a need, within my imagination, to capture and to share. I see hundreds in my social media feeds doing the same; its what we do now, as the innate artist in every human takes its turn. Equipped with user friendly technology, we go mushroom hunting with old school collectors, to document secret places, so that others might observe. No longer confined to a sketch pad, or #2 pencil for taking notes, and armed with the newest phones & compact Go-Pros, we follow goat herds, and snow boarders, into the wild. The youngest generations among us have only a handful of reference points in this regard, though perhaps a few are curious, in a retro kind of way. They wouldn’t understand how I shot a film in 35mm in 1978 but couldn’t edit it, due to lack of funds. They wouldn’t get it, my efforts to solicit “filmmakers” to look at my rough cut. How I spent all the free hours I had, once upon a time, in an old warehouse building filled with aging Steenbeck editing tables, longing to get my chance to use one. There was a hierarchy, and a pecking order, to recording things. Same in audio, for better, or for worse. And now, today, I take in the river’s tumbling speed song, like a drug I can’t get enough of. Who could ever really know that thing, or understand it, or enter into its cathedral of echoing water, without weeping? Not I. But for the hardening conclusion, that he who records the best, who digitizes most convincingly, and cleverly, will win. The phrase “dog & pony show” comes to mind, along with the word: “entertainment”. I turn to my truck, for consolation, for joy. One freedom still allowed, not force fed out a cyber chute or talking head. It’s still a simple trip to town, on a dirt road. It’s slow, it’s mud, it’s rain turning to sleet, it’s a weak thread of dying, twilight past a field of crushed corn stalks. I don’t let any device talk to me while I’m attending the church of topography, in my case, the church of Vermont. There’s a special treat out there called a local newspaper, cup of coffee and muffin. In place of rosary beads, I’m counting spring waterfalls on the side of Route 17. I’m checking on my neighbors, seeing whose lights are on, and who is still in darkness. Which skidders are still in motion, how much wood is piled up in the log yard, ready to ship out green to early buyers. I’m praying to the sap running, the steam dotting the forest, the hidden sugar houses nearly done boiling, to the ice is breaking up across the vast beaver ponds, where I’ll never get a good shot, ever, because I can’t get into the swamp, not for lack of trying. I can’t unbuild any of the new roads or houses that really shouldn’t be there, in the raven woods, or on the perfect, pristine cliffs. But all in all, it’s not for me to say. Liz’s cabin is still visible, barely electrified, still standing like a holy shrine, holding vigil, timeless, a piece of my cherished past. I know the crows, the herons, the single light bulbs that lit a whole generation of homesteaders, will soon dim or fly off. But that damn river will never stop, not for any of us, not ever.”
