Fragments From Floyd

It seemed straightforward enough: find sound samples online, make positive ID's of the night noises we hear in mid-summer. That's a Katydid, for sure...but aren't there several species? Field crickets chirp chirp chirping, but then, I've seen bush and tree crickets here and there; I'm not sure which ratchety stridulation belongs to which, and that would be important information on the Goose Creek scale of relative importance.

So I set off to find my simple sounds, download the WAV files, memorize them, and recognize them forever more. "Oh that high-pitched nasal buzzing there is snowy tree cricket" I'll explain to myself. "The snowy tree cricket chirps at a regular rate that is dependent on the temperature. By adding 40 to the number of chirps heard in 15 seconds, one can get a good approximation of the outside air temperature" I will self-elucidate, and be amazed, as if I'm hearing it for the first time. We keep the amazement threshold purposefully very low here, that a matter for yet another post!

Well, you guessed it. I got totally diverted from my critical mission by a fascinating page filled with HOURS of nature sounds of the most amazing mix and quality. Junglewalk -- Animal Videos, Sounds and Images sucked me in and wouldn't let go. Soon, I found myself immersed in EarthEar, and there went the morning.

Do you listen? Do you take "sound snapshots" where you live, work, travel; keep them like Kodachromes for the ears and memory? I guess I have, all my adult life. I remember, for instance, sitting up to my neck in the tepid water of an Alabama bog on a warm July night (with other weirdo grad students) surrounded by a chorus of eight different frogs, peeping, piping, splashing, and trilling--exactly the soundscape I heard in my diverted browsing yesterday. And the sounds brought back the snapshots I made with my ears thirty years ago. I was back there reliving the moment, the sound-memory was so indelibly fixed, held, and now rehearsed. (Some amphibian sounds, here.)

From here, there is a long riff that talks about how we chose what we hear, about the filters we put up when our soundscapes are not pleasant, as I did when we lived in the city. But that will have to wait for another time.