Just a short post (and apologies for not posting in a while, it has been a busy month looks to continue being busy for the next few weeks but that really shouldn't be an excuse) on things that are both important and frequently overlooked: sound and darkness. When one thinks of nature, the first things that come to mind are often landscapes, sometimes animals or plants, but the idea is almost always dominated by the visual. In fact, many people probably think of nature as a place where it is silent, only realizing that it is actually filled with myriad noises of its own, from the wind and water to the sound of insects, birds, and other animals, all of which contribute to the soundscape (and not in the cheesy, "sounds of nature" relaxation tape way).
What got me thinking about this topic was a profile I read about a month ago about Davyd Betchkal and other members of the Denali National Park sound capture team. Their goal is to record a month's worth of sound from around the park and despite the remoteness of the location and the fact that they have been at it for six years, they still have only 36 days of audio without combustion engines. Some sites have recorded as many as 78 planes in a 24 hour period. Another captures some kind of motor every 17 minutes. While human activities undoubtedly affect wildlife, it is unclear if there is a minimum level of disturbance that can coexist with a healthy, "natural" ecosystem and soundscape. Part of why it is so difficult to determine is because it is so difficult to record days without disturbance, let alone multiple days at once. It is hard to know what to change when there isn't even a well-defined baseline to use for comparison. Combine that with the inherent uncertainty behind observation (the Observer Effect and the Uncertainty Principle can be particularly pronounced when dealing with sounds and wildlife for obvious reasons) and it can seem like an almost impossible task.
As difficult as the task the Denali recorders have set for themselves may be, it is an important one and when I read about it I immediately was reminded of Maya Lin's beautiful and ambitious, multi-media memorial/exhibit/installation/activism called What is Missing? This piece, at home on the internet but partnered with organizations and individuals worldwide, is meant to draw attention to the disappearance of species from the planet, in part by using audio and video pieces to highlight what is or, more often, isn't there. We don't often think about the world in terms of what used to be or what is absent, but this piece forces us to confront that and urges action to prevent a world where all the sounds (and sights and smells and ecological contributions) are limited to just a handful of the most common, most opportunistic, or most invasive species.
While it isn't exactly the same, I would say that a similar idea relates to darkness. Darkness isn't actually dark, at least not in the open wilderness (caves are different), but it is important. Light pollution, like sound pollution, separates us from the world around us, concentrating our attention on the ground level experience and reducing our awareness of the greater world and universe around us. There is something about being able to look into a truly dark sky and see to incomprehensible distances that changes one's outlook, I would say for the better, and opens the mind to the existence of things and people beyond the immediate experience. While urban areas will always have light pollution, there is much that can be done to reduce it so that safety concerns are still satisfied but the ugly brown glow blotting out the sky and spreading over the horizon is minimized.
So those are my quick thoughts on sound and light. I know I haven't done them justice but I hope that just by talking about them I can help bring them out of the background, where they are often upstaged by the showier, more breathtaking scenery.
