Soundwalk

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit chadcrouch.substack.com The Sugarlands take their name from the sugar maple trees on these slopes of the Great Smoky Mountains. Writer Horace Kephart described the area this way in 1919 letter: I have just returned from a man-hunt in the Sugarlands of Sevier County, Tennessee. The Sugarland Mountain runs northwest from the Smokies betwe...

I wasn’t sure what to expect from the soundscape of the Smoky Mountains in October. I’d been there in the fall 25 years ago, but my memories were mostly confined to images, and a generalized sense of topography. What I found on return was a soundscape of crickets in the valleys, stridulating in a glacial crescendo—from a murmur in the afternoon to a full-blown cacophony in the gloaming of dusk. Th...

Panthertown Valley is a relatively small 6311-acre wilderness area in Nantahala National Forest in western North Carolina, in the Blue Ridge Mountains. It’s a little bit off the beaten track, but far from obscure, as the old promoter’s trick of slapping the label “Yosemite of the East” seems to have piqued interest over the decades. The Yosemite comparison owes itself to the granite features of th...

Last year, around this time, I travelled to Durham, NC for a record label conference. The city reminded me of Eugene, OR, where I went to school for a short time. Both are university towns. Durham has a bigger population, and is just one node of a much larger urban area, but the downtown cores are similarly compact, pedestrian-friendly, and relatively quiet. My mission at the conference was to fig...

What is the hike up to Burnt Lake without the greyed spectral snags of ancient old growth, killed, but not entirely destroyed, by fire? Would it be like walking through a graveyard with no gravestones? The stand of trees along the trail is uniform, almost homogenous. A mix of hemlock and Douglas-fir. Scattered among these conifer poles are columns, smoothed and greyed, sometimes hollowed out. They...

Today we are visiting Holland Park in west central London. But before we do, let’s zoom out. If you look at a map of central London you’ll see, within the spiderweb of roadways fanning out from the Thames, hundreds of small green rectilinear plots. Where I live, on the west coast of the United States, this symbology tends to translate as parks or open spaces, accessible to the public. Not so in Lo...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit chadcrouch.substack.com Before I begin, just a quick plug for my son, Sam, who I’ve mentioned briefly on here. Today marks the release of his first single, ever; “Tides”. Sam has developed really quickly in the last year. He started composing his own songs six months ago, and started making recordings just three months ago. He has a han...

A short post today, for a short piece. First off, one thing to be clear about is this is not Newcastle upon Tyne, UK Soundwalk . This is Newcastle, Northern Ireland, UK, at the foot of the enchanting Mourne Mountains. It’s quite a charming little seaside town. Not too posh, not too shabby. Maybe this even comes through in the environmental recording? Newcastle just feels so tucked-in. You can hop...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit chadcrouch.substack.com Maple Pass is a mountain pass loop trail in North Cascades National Park. It’s 6.8 miles, rated hard , and scores a 4.9/5 on alltrails.com . It’s about as good as it gets, really. I went there with my son a year ago now, to the day. It was great. Clear skies, warm sun, wildflowers in bloom, birds singing. A few w...

It’s funny how arrivals can turn into quiet affairs. Like, say, you’re walking along a trail with a friend and you get to a view or a waterfall or something and then slip into quiet. That’s how I’m feeling with this arrival. It is the arrival of my first LP, and the sound recording it contains, which both captures and takes inspiration from The Wildwood Trail in Portland, Oregon’s Forest Park. To...

It was supposed to be the highlight of our trip. I spent a few days with my son hiking in the North Cascades last summer. The North Cascades is, according to one YouTuber who titled his video The Most Breathtaking Hike of my Life! , the “American Alps”. It’s also one of the least visited National Parks in the US lower 48. It ranks as the second-least, to be precise, after Isle Royale National Park...

I alluded to a crop of urban soundwalk and soundscape recordings on the way a few weeks ago with Amsterdam Dawn . We’re still easing in with another Listening Spot treatment: a musical suite in conversation with a continuous environmental sound recording. This is Paris during an evening summer rain. It’s a vignette, recorded from a 5th floor room in the 3rd arrondissement. Just over 6 minutes long...

We are back at Tahoma / Mount Rainier this week for another soundwalk. These hikes were made in June, 2024, on a weekend father and son getaway. The recordings were edited to focus on the natural soundscape (but you can make out four feet scuffling along the trail at certain points.) I’ve always felt a strong pull to Tahoma, having hiked around it on the Pacific Crest Trail in August, 1994. It sno...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit chadcrouch.substack.com Comet Falls is on the south side of Tahoma (Mount Rainier) offering a nice four mile roundtrip hike, perfect for a day when the mountain is socked-in. It’s one of the most impressive falls that I’ve hiked to, dropping about 320 feet (98 m) in a vertical plunge from a hanging valley into a pretty subalpine canyon....

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit chadcrouch.substack.com On many a post I’ve told a story about how I found a spot somewhere, that despite being within an urban area, sounded as if it might be in the deep woods. As a practical matter this tends to rely on geologic and erosive forces creating canyons and acoustic gullies of one sort or the other. While I find this sort...

Traveling around, I’ve become aware of how Pacific Northwest rain is different from rain patterns in other regions of the US. Take Texas, for example. Texas rain pours . Houses don’t have gutters there, presumably because they can’t engineer them large enough to accommodate the deluges reliably. Storm water infrastructure is three times the size of what I see around here. In contrast, Oregon rain...

This is a story about a trail called Nature Trail. At the heart of the story is a simple question: What is nature for ? Feel free to click play above to listen to the soundscape of Nature Trail as we ponder this question. Nature Trail was built in the 1960’s in the interior of the roughly 5,000-acre nature park that had been dedicated 20 years prior, but received little attention in the way of dev...

Olympic National Park is the 8th most visited National Park in the US. About 95% of the park is roadless and designated wilderness, making it one of the most wild and undeveloped parks in the entire National Park system. Many of these most-visited parks have a significant road footprint, which makes much of their interior accessible. In contrast, Olympic National Park is largely one big wilderness...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit chadcrouch.substack.com When I first heard a radio piece about Mt. Tabor Park being awarded America’s first Urban Quiet Park I have to admit I was incredulous. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for it, but of all the parks I visit to make field recordings in the Portland area, this one might be the most frustrating. That is, if you’re hoping...

And so we start again. Happy New Year everyone! I picked this album to coincide with the new year because the field recording it is built on is, to me, a kind of tonic. It pulses with the sound of distant surf, wildlife, and a spring rain shower. Recorded on April 10th last year at Agnes Creek Open Space, a 57 acre woodland in the heart of Lincoln City, Oregon, this soundscape features the low din...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit chadcrouch.substack.com Hi Everyone. How are we? Are you OK? I’m OK. I’m just really grateful to be able to do this: to walk, listen, make music. To share it here. It’s a dream gig, really. So for starters today, I think we should discuss the weird name of this week’s soundwalk. It comes from a log cabin built in 1907, as the first admi...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit chadcrouch.substack.com The view from Morgan Lake looks more like Montana than Oregon to me. It’s big sky country. Just 10 minutes up a gravel road from the eastern Oregon city of La Grande, Morgan Lake is mysteriously a world apart. From its shores you see only rolling prairie giving way to distant mountains. Situated on a ridge, Morga...

Dear Reader, In this Thanksgiving season, I just wanted to take a moment to express gratitude I’ve been feeling for three people here on Substack that I admire, and who have helped me to connect with a bunch of you. Carson Ellis Carson is a busy artist / illustrator and children’s book author, but when I asked her for her take on Substack almost two years ago she emailed back the same day with a 6...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit chadcrouch.substack.com It’s a Substack exclusive! Natural Bridges was on the shorter side (11:34) so I didn’t slate it for a wide release. I hadn’t even listened to it for over four months, until a few days ago. It surprised me how good it was: how transportive, how intertwined, how gentle, how concise. This all brings to mind the subj...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit chadcrouch.substack.com One thing I think you come to appreciate after some months or years of field recording, or intentional listening, is the variability of sound that conifers make when played by the wind. Where I live, I’m surrounded by conifers. Douglas-firs abound. They produce a sharp sound in the wind, occasionally what you mig...