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Malheur means “misfortune”. It comes from French-Canadian trappers who applied the name to the SE Oregon area, when in 1818, a cache of beaver furs was believed to be stolen by local indigenous people. Malheur River, Malheur County and Malheur National Wildlife Refuge all take their names from this origin story.
Malheur National Wildlife Refuge is a wonder. Its main geologic feature is the basin lake: Malheur Lake. It’s similar in one way to The Great Salt Lake, a closed basin lake, but Malheur is technically an intermittent basin lake. In wetter years the water flows outward and onward from the lake. This prevents salts from building up, keeping it a fresh water habitat. For this reason, and because is surrounded by arid lands, it is a migratory bird haven.
The refuge was created in 1908, partly in response to the wholesale slaughter of egrets and herons for their plume feathers, which were used as ornamentation on women’s hats of the time. Eventually the reserve grew to 293 square miles in size. It’s a beautiful, quiet country. Sagebrush uplands surround the lake and riparian habitats.
It really is something to realize that when you boil it down, the Euro-American expansion in to western North America was hastened by hat fashion. Before gold, there were beavers, herons and egrets. That’s where the easy money was. Showy hats with little practical value. Beaver hides were felted and often dyed black for bowler, fedora and top hats.
Today, in wet years, high numbers of nesting colonial birds, including White-faced Ibis can be found here. I associate Florida and the gulf coast with ibises, not Oregon. Observing these birds here feels novel to me. Ibis can be heard in this recording, on the wing, ranging by.
There’s all kinds of shorebirds too, on the shorelines and mudflats.
The melodious Western Meadowlark, welcomes in the day.
As for Malheur, it’s arguably a word more apropos to the fate of the Native Americans than the trappers and settlers. In the winter of 2016 a different kind of “malheur” played out, but we’ll save that for Part 2, next week.
The environmental audio was recorded from the sagebrush uplands pointed towards the vast shallow lake wetlands. This soundstage was truly large; on the order of 1000 acres across the auditory horizon.
The instrumentation is familiar for a Listening Spot recording. (This is 7th such effort.) String-like sounds with slow attack and decay rise and fall in movements. Among the more novel sounds are undulations; gently percolating guitar voices and fuzzy textures. It gets very quiet and sparse at the 19 minute mark (Track 9) near the end. A Whimbrel can be heard in the distance, while high thin tones punctuate the ambience in a plaintive sort of way. It seems like the quietest moments are usually my favorites. I hope you’ll check it out.
Thanks for reading and listening. I’m grateful for you. Malheur Suite I is available under the artist name Listening Spot on all streaming platforms (Spotify, Apple, Tidal, Amazon, YouTube…) Friday, March 14th.
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For our next series we are going to be exploring various locations in Redwoods National & State Parks. First up, Grove of the Titans!
The interesting thing about this grove is that it’s not on the official Redwood National Park map. That’s because it became too popular in the Instagram and Google maps era. Visitation grew exponentially in the late 2000’s and 2010’s. The bases and roots of the trees were getting trampled. In response, the park service installed 1,500 feet of metal boardwalk in 2019—contributing a signature sound mark to this particular soundwalk.
The other factor the park service considered in its decision to reduce official visibility of this grove is limited access to the trailhead itself, via Howland Hill Road, an old stagecoach route. On this dusty, winding, single-lane gravel road you can practically reach out the window and touch massive old-growth trees—and cars passing the other direction!
The truth is, the grove isn’t markedly more spectacular than others in the park, which are easier to visit.
But there are some unique features. One centerpiece may be Screaming Titans, a fused tree with a diameter of 30 feet, seen from the central platform.
Another is Chesty Puller, where the boardwalk winds around another fused giant on a slope.
None of these pictures convey the sense of awe that one feels being here in person.
What is most distinctive about the soundscape, though, is the absence of sound. We made our visit in the evening, which I’d recommend for the mellow light and the thinned-down crowds on a summer day. Except for the ravens, who add their calls in the final minutes, you’d be hard pressed to pick out other birds, who are sparsely seen but go largely unheard. This surprised me, even in July. My guess is it’s a different story in the early morning.
But, there is something quieting about the trees themselves, too. The extensive surface area of deeply pitted bark really does dampen sound energy. It’s distinctive for the absence of reverberation that one expects in a grove of trees.
"The redwoods, once seen, leave a mark or create a vision that stays with you always. No one has ever successfully painted or photographed a redwood tree. The feeling they produce is not transferable. From them comes silence and awe. It's not only their unbelievable stature, nor the color which seems to shift and vary under your eyes, no, they are not like any trees we know, they are ambassadors from another time." - John Steinbeck
The backbone of my score instrumentation is the Hohner Pianet electric piano. Playing off that is a Korg Prototype 8 patch that is sure to cause some lean-back listeners to lean in, on first hearing it. (You’ll have to listen via streaming or consider become a supporting subscriber to get my drift here, as it enters the mix in track 4, about five and a half minutes in.) Lastly, there’s a little upright piano, celeste and dulcimer. In all, quite minimal. That seems to be my trajectory. Less is more, even when there’s no birdsong.
I hope you enjoy this very quiet soundwalk through Grove of the Titans. It is most certainly not the default vibe here. If you can make the trip, especially in summer, expect plenty of company. This, and other coast redwood groves here are truly wonders of our planet!
Thanks for listening and reading. I’m thankful for your interest. Grove of the Titans Soundwalk is available on all streaming platforms (Spotify, Apple, Tidal, Amazon, YouTube…) on Friday, March 7th.
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This post originally introduced the pseudonym Crou, which I quickly abandoned, given the name already had multiple artist profiles on streaming services, and I realized a lot of people rely on voice commands to play music in the car and at home. “Crou” made that difficult.
My usual approach angles don’t seem to apply here. This is something new. This is Sleeping Animal.
I think I’m going to script a conversation, à la NPR. Bear with me. Here goes:
What is Sleeping Animal?
Well, Sleeping Animal was a name I landed on a while ago, because I thought it sounded warm, contented, and vulnerable. It’s something I want be a placeholder for a side project that isn’t fully defined. It’s also apropos of not including environmental sound, as if the animals were all sleeping.
You just spun off Listening Spot, right?
Yes, and I actually used those words, even though they’re giving gimmicky energy. Listening Spot and Sleeping Animal, and some of the others that have come before could have been projects released under the name Chad Crouch, but I’m already pushing it when it comes to having a “right-sized” release catalog.
Is there anything different about the music?
Yes. There are no field recordings with Sleeping Animal. There is more room for more instruments and layers in the arrangements. And, there is, for now, a hint of vocals… Otherwise, pretty similar, really.
Anything else?
Hmm… I’ve really been enjoying old photographic images; glass plate negatives, sepia-toned silver gelatin prints; that kind of thing. Might be a visual direction for the project. It is for this release!
The debut release Coots by Sleeping Animal is available on all music streaming sites (Spotify, Apple, Amazon, Tidal, etc.) Friday, February 28th.
Earlier this week: Reflecting on some formative listens.
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I haven’t yet said this, but my intention with this and the previous three recordings was a hopscotch survey of Pacific Coast soundscapes. To recollect now, these have been Yoakam Point on the Oregon Coast, Copalis Ghost Forest on the Washington Coast, Keahou on the Big Island of Hawaii and now Preston Island in Crescent City, on the Northern California Coast.
This reflection on Preston Island leads me to ponder sites along the lower Columbia River at length, for reasons which will soon reveal themselves.
Preston Island is weird. For starters, it’s not what anyone would call an island. You can walk right out onto its strange rocky surface from the mainland. The view from the island is breathtaking though, and I thought it made a better album cover than the island itself:
The island is relatively flat, but also boulder-strewn and cracked. When I visited, it was foggy, and I felt like I was on the surface of another planet. Something about it seemed unnatural:
It all clicked when I found this historical photo:
Preston Island was carted off. It was mined down to a nub.
Let’s get our bearings. Here’s an 1880’s Crescent City map, and a modern satellite photo. (I guess cardinal north pointing up wasn’t yet the rule.)
On the map you’ll see Preston Island clearly drawn as a landmass, and Hall’s Bluff, appearing much less prominently than it does today. I outlined the locations on the satellite image. Here, all the rock contained in those geographical features was mined and dumped in the ocean to create the jetty you see on the upper right of the satellite image. They really moved mountains.
This is what Preston Island used to look like, and here it is today, courtesy of Google Street View:
Our soundwalk takes us from West 5th Street in Crescent City, over to the beach and up over what’s now called Half Butte, to about where this old photo of Hall’s Bluff (aka Lover’s Rock) was taken in 1876. Look at the tiny figures on top for a sense of scale:
The massive Lover’s Rock headland, was also carted off to build the jetty.
It’s harder to match the original photo vantage point with Street View, but it’s also just completely gone.
But let’s get back to Preston Island, that weird scab-land of a place. Let’s take a closer look at it, because it gives our soundwalk such unique character about 17 minutes in. At a glance, it seems lifeless. A green hue, coming from chalky veins in the rock, adds to the otherworldliness of the landscape.
Tide pools form on the perimeter, among the cracks and fissures in the rock substrate. It’s here that I place my recording hat down and the soundscape is instantly transformed. The skitter of crabs and the capillary clicking sounds of tiny shellfish erupt to fill the high frequencies, while the surf sound is attenuated by the topography of the rocks.
It’s another world.
A 2021 article in the Bandon Western World states, “Preston Island has a long history in Crescent City. Originally Preston Peak, the area was a sacred site for the Tolowa Nation.”
It is not well known, but the Tolowa were the subject of the most persistent and possibly worst massacres of Native Americans in the USA, starting in 1853, in the Crescent City area.
Now, I couldn’t corroborate the name “Preston Peak”, but I have to admit I was not surprised to hear that a sacred place to Native Americans was destroyed. There have been others.
Pillar Rock
Consider Pillar Rock (briefly “Pilot Rock”) in the Columbia River. Once a monolith upwards of 75 feet tall, it was dynamited and flattened at the 25 foot level to install a navigation light:
The Chinookan name for the monolith was Talapus.
A cannery built nearby in 1877 used a likeness similar to Talapus for its canned salmon label, Pillar Rock brand. The rock was dynamited by 1922 when, according to the shipping news, a red navigation light was established. Like Talapus, the spring Chinook fishery in the Columbia was a diminished remnant of what it once was when Pillar Rock Cannery suspended operations in 1947.
In a surprising epilogue Pillar Rock is still an actively used trade mark today, in 2025. The company now fishes the waters of Alaska for wild Sockeye to fill the modern day tins.
It’s remarkable how Euro-Americans changed the landscape and practically wiped out the fishery, but the brand is the thing that perseveres. What does it say about us that this is the way things are?
Let’s consider the intriguing story of Mount Coffin, up the Columbia River about 40 river miles.
Mount Coffin
The geological feature that was first described to the historical record by Lieutenant William R. Broughton in 1792, and given the name “Mount Coffin”, was a Chinookan canoe burial ground.
It would have appeared much the same a half century later, when Charles Wilkes visited in 1841, but quite different than the 1900 image above. Imagine, if you will, thousands of dugout cedar canoes perched in the trees on the prominent outcrop, about five feet above ground, in varying states of decay, all with bows pointed more or less toward the ocean. Within these canoes lay the interned bodies of Chinookans of the Skilloot tribe, wrapped in cedar blankets with their belongings placed beside them. That scene came to a swift end in 1841.
The U.S. Exploring Expedition, led by Charles Wilkes, camped on Mount Coffin in 1841. When the men accidentally let a campfire spread, it destroyed an estimated 3,000 burial canoes. The Chinookan Indians were distressed to discover that their burial site had been destroyed by the negligence of whites and, according to visiting artist Paul Kane, “would no doubt have sought revenge had they felt themselves strong enough to do so.” (Stealing from The Dead, Oregon Historical Quarterly)
Many Upper Chinookan villages were by 1841 entirely depopulated following devastating waves of malaria in the early 1830’s, so Paul Kane’s observation rings true.
Within a century this lowland was completely transformed. The largest lumber mill in the world was built upriver from Mount Coffin.
Mount Coffin was completely dynamited and quarried, beginning in 1929. The site is a now home to a chemical plant. Flat as a pancake.
Finally let’s consider the monolith in the heart of the Columbia Gorge that few realize barely escaped dynamite. So we are told…
Beacon Rock
To the natives it was Che-che-op-tin. When Lewis & Clark mapped the area in 1805 it was referred to as “Beaten Rock” and on return a year later “Beacon Rock”. Later, the 1841 Wilkes Exploring Expedition labelled it “Castle Rock”, which stuck for the better part of a century. Since 1916, it’s been Beacon Rock.
Just west of Beacon Rock was a large village Captain Lewis in 1806 called Wah-clel-lah (a Watlala winter village):
This village appears to be the winter station of the Wah-clel-lahs and Clahclellars…14 houses remain entire but are at this time but thinly inhabited, nine others appear to have been lately removed, and the traces of ten or twelve others of ancient date were to be seen in the rear of their present village.
There was also another village at the very foot of beacon rock. Traces of it remained visible to the trained eye into the 1950’s.
“BIG BLAST WILL WRECK IT”
“Castle Rock to Go” and “Whole Rock is Doomed” read the subheadings in a March 16th, 1906 article in The Oregonian. The article outlined how the owners, a coterie of eight businessmen including Dan Kerns, acting as the Columbia Construction Company, had already cut three 20 to 30 ft. tunnels under the southern aspect of the monolith in preparations to dynamite “the shoulder” of the rock and quarry the stone for building material, eventually removing it entirely.
A Wikipedia entry states (without citation), “The United States Army Corps of Engineers planned to destroy the rock to supply material for the jetty at the mouth of the Columbia.” This appears to be incorrect. The Army Corps didn’t have that plan. The Columbia Construction Company purported to have a plan to mine an initial two million tons for building material (possibly to include jetty material—there were no contracts) in 1906. Columbia jetty work began 20 years prior to that.
The Columbia Construction Company was taken to court, and a jury sided with Portland & Seattle Railway, who argued the tunnels were part of an elaborate ruse to “claim damages from $100,000 to $500,000” from lost mining activity due to the rail line going through their intended quarry site. According to the plaintiffs, it was just a scheme to get the railway to pay dearly for the right of way. The jurors dashed that plan, stipulating a $5000 settlement.
Was it an elaborate ruse? Or was the jury predisposed not to trust city businessmen? What was clear, according to The Oregonian, was that, “clergymen, leading citizens, women, teachers, and all classes in Portland and throughout the state were horrified as the proposed destruction of such a majestic landmark.”
“I should judge Castle Rock contains 10 million tons of first class building stone,” Kerns said in 1906. Interestingly, that wouldn’t have been enough for the massive Columbia jetty system, which ultimately required 13 million tons of rock, when competed in 1939, after half century of construction.
Henry J. Biddle took ownership of Beacon Rock from the Columbia Construction Company in 1915, under the condition it would be preserved, and set about realizing his dream to build a trail to the summit.
Henry J. Biddle purchased the rock in 1915 for $1 and during the next three years constructed a trail with 51 switchbacks, handrails and bridges. The three-quarter mile trail to the top, completed in April 1918, leads to views in all directions. (Wikipedia)
Thanks for listening and reading. I’m thankful for your attention. Preston Island Soundwalk is available on all streaming platforms (Spotify, Apple, Tidal, Amazon, YouTube…) on Friday, February 21st.
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Just a quick refresher: My Listening Spot series features one long, stationary environmental recording with a bespoke ambient composition. Peaceful, atmospheric, ambiguous. You’re invited to press play and read on!
Ah, the South Pacific. Hawaii. The Big Island. It conjures all kinds of idyllic images, sounds, and fragrances: romantic sunsets, palms gently swaying in the tropical breeze, the sound of birdsong and tumbling surf, the fragrance of Plumeria wafting through the air…
Reality is often different. The traveller may encounter the glaring midday sun, the roar of landscaping machinery, the buzz of AC units, the fragrance of exhaust as vehicles vie for parking at popular beaches.
Is paradise a myth? Why is it so tantalizing?
Airbnb will let you allow the traveller to filter accommodations down to the amenity of a hair dryer, but offers little help in for finding a quiet place to stay. Analyzing maps is often more helpful than parsing descriptions.
I was grateful to find a sleepy 1960’s era condo resort in Keauhou, tucked away from the highway, for our family summer vacation. This soundscape was recorded in the dawn hours of an August morning last year. A little slice of deep island quiet.
I’m no Hawaii bird expert but I think what we are hearing is the gentle dawn song of Java Sparrows, a bird native to the islands of Java and Bali—where it is now rare—and introduced to Hawaii and elsewhere.
It’s possible there’s Warbling White-eye or Saffron Finch chiming in, but it’s all new to me, honestly.
The composition is a little different than my standard fare. There’s a synth pad built from cricket sounds, and there’s another synth pad that has a unique choral timbre… The reverb is bigger, and the harmonic complexity is pushing my comfort zone. That is to say, there’s some dense chords being played here—minor 9th chords, suspended 4ths, and so on—often blurring from one to the other. I’m kind of a lightweight when it comes to harmonics that introduce tension, but I’m curious. All in all, it’s very peaceful and reflective, but also bittersweet; like a Mona Lisa smile painted in sound waves. For an environmental recording from paradise, it’s not exactly what I would call “escapist”.
Thanks for reading and listening. I’m grateful for your interest. Island Dawn Suite is available under the artist name Listening Spot on all streaming platforms (Spotify, Apple, Tidal, Amazon, YouTube…) Friday, February 7th.
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I want to tell you a ghost story. But, first a music story.
In the music industry the story of an album is told in a “one sheet”. Typically a few paragraphs in length, the one sheet explains the outlines of album personnel, timeline, context, and often place, but not always. There are tropes of course, as it is with any kind of writing: there’s the comeback album, the vision quest album, the concept album, the crisis and/or rebound album, the joined forces album…
In the past two years I’ve created 60 soundwalk albums and 0 one sheets. Instead, I first added spoken commentary to the top of podcast versions of the soundwalks. (Think spoken liner notes.) These focused on the place and time the field recording was made, and secondarily offered insights into the composition and instrumentation. When I shifted my podcast over to Substack, I nixed the spoken intro and wrote posts about whatever I found interesting about the various places. I leaned into more research, wanting to understand the places over time. These writings didn’t resemble one sheets at all. Still, I enjoyed the learning that came from them, and I figured the reader could decide whether or not it was of interest to them. I can’t imagine writing all those one sheets. What a chore! And so it goes, the ghost story beats the music story.
The ghosts at Copalis are the dead trees, and they provide a 325-year-old link to the geologic history of the Pacific Northwest. The Copalis Ghost Forest is the site geologist Brian Atwater used to prove the theory that the Pacific Northwest periodically experiences megathrust earthquakes that cause powerful tsunamis (like the 2011 Tōhoku Quake in Japan that registered 9.0 on the Richter scale.)
But what does that have to do with the music, really? And what does that have to do with the soundscape I recorded on March 26th, 2024?
Well let’s just start with a first impression: It’s gorgeous here.
The weathered grey stand of snags in the estuary wetland are instantly mysterious, evoking a scene of ruin; an old cemetery of wooden markers in states of advanced decay.
Nurse logs play host to a diverse microcosm of life, islands of regeneration.
The wildlife in the soundscape evokes that pastoral beauty: the clicky ribbit of Pacific tree frogs, the quiet, glitchy cro-cro-cro of Common Mergansers, the chittery peal of a Belted Kingfisher, and the brisk R2-D2-esque chatter of a Marsh Wren.
Then there is the subtle sound of open space and weather, the tapping of an ephemeral rain shower on the tin roof of a fishing shack. Shhhhhh… Being here alone on an overcast day, I felt something akin to the reverence of a pilgrim. This place is a testament to the energy pent up in the Cascadia Subduction Zone, a coiled spring with the force of 25,000 nuclear bombs.
Brian Atwater and David Yamaguchi used soil cores and tree ring dating to show that the trees here died in the winter of 1700. They linked this date to a written record of an "orphan tsunami" recorded in Japan on January 26, 1700, suggesting that the land subsided in a great earthquake, drowning the grove in salt water, and sending a tsunami all the way to Japan. He and his colleagues published these findings in Science magazine in 1995.
Here is Atwater in 2014, making a short video recounting a Copalis River visit for an 8th Grade class.
Putting together the stratigraphic evidence—from landslides in undersea canyons—scientists further revealed the Pacific Northwest experienced major quakes roughly every 200–800 years. Since the 1990’s we’ve known it’s not a matter of if but when. “The Big One” will surely come.
So, that’s the story of Copalis Ghost Forest in a nutshell. But being here, well, it’s much less cerebral and more visceral. That’s where music comes in. Music goes where words cannot.
For my score I leaned into vibrato drones, plaintive piano, electric piano melodies, lonesome electric guitar, and simmering dulcimer. As always, it’s probably best experienced in headphones or a quiet space.
Copalis Ghost Forest Soundwalk is available on all streaming platforms (Spotify, Apple, Tidal, Amazon, YouTube…) on Friday, January 31st.
For Further Watching
Here Nick Zenter explains the Copalis Ghost Forest with excellent visual storytelling (but you may want to skip the 30 second intro).
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Nothing like a trip to the ocean to start a new year! I feel so fortunate to live just over an hour away from one of the most beautiful coastlines on this planet.
This recording was made at Yoakam Point, near Coos Bay Oregon, about 4 hours down the coast. It’s a uniquely beautiful sounding surf here, I have to say.
And you might think to yourself, all beaches sound nice, Chad. And well, it would be hard-hearted of me to try to argue with you on that point. They all do sound nice, but some just sound more nice. The tuning here must have something to do with the rocks that reach into the ocean lake a giant hand, as if playing the surf like so many harp strings.
The scarp ridges reflect the sound waves of the tumbling surf like a giant instrument, but not in a way that sounds like mush. The contours are clean and the details are sharp.
If you listen closely you’ll hear the distant moan of a fog horn on the low end (though I did soften it considerably with a low scoop EQ) and the peals of Pigeon Guillemot on the high end of this soundscape.
Now if you’re like me, you might wonder, why is it called “Yoakam Point”? And, if you’re like me, not finding an answer at the ready makes this one of life’s little mysteries that needs to be solved. I expected it to be named for some ship captain or crew mate. If not that, then certainly a white man, probably a pioneer or politician, or both.
So, wading through numerous Google results for modern country singer Dwight Yoakam, I finally chanced upon a couple fascinating stories tracing the Yoakam surname in Coos County. And, to my surprise these stories enobled no man, but spoke to the perseverance of two generations of Yoakam women. How refreshing!
Tragedy of the Burning Tree
In 1855 newly arrived settlers Eliza and John Yoakam lost five daughters to a tree aflame falling on their home, as detailed in this 1906 obituary:
In 1855 they moved to a homestead about six miles from Empire City on [what] is now known as the Cammon wagon road.
It was here that the awful tragedy of Mrs. Yoakam’s life occurred—one that would only be possible in pioneer days, when a large, burning tree fell with terrific force upon their little cabin, shattering it and instantly killing five of their children, one a babe in its mother’s arms. The accident happened in the evening, when the children were nearly all asleep, and when later the anguished parents searched amid the ruins of their little ones, they found four of them dead where they had slept.
Two little boys, Jasper and George, aged 7 and 5 years, still missing, were found in their little trundle bed alive and fast asleep. The branches of the tree had fallen in such a manner as to shield their little bed, and the commotion had not even awakened them. The scene of the accident is known as Yoakam’s Hill, and stately firs, spreading cedars the graceful rhododendron now grow in wild luxuriance where these hapless children lie in their dreamless sleep.
The homestead was abandoned, as the poor mother could find no happiness there, and after a few sad months in Empire City and Eastport, they moved to the Coquiller River, where they remained until 1867, when they bought the William Jackson farm on South Coos River, and literally hewed for themselves a home out of the wilderness. In this home probably the happiest years of Mrs. Yoakam s life were spent; other children came to her almost empty arms, and listening to their happy laughter, her old sorrow gradually faded away. For many years “Yoakam’s” was synonymous with good cheer and hospitality.
Mrs. Yoakam was a woman of rare type, well fitted by nature for the struggles and adventures of pioneer life. Mr. Yoakam died in 1876, and for many years his widow successfully managed the farm, failing health finally compelling her to leave it.
She was the mother of twelve children, five of whom survive her. (Coquille Herald)
One of her children, George Yoakam, died in 1901, gored by a neighbor’s wayward bull, leaving his wife Sarah, three daughters and a son. Taking a page from her mother-in-law, Sarah successfully managed the family farm in the wake of the tragedy.
Sarah Yoakam Forges Ahead
That a woman can conduct a dairy farm most successfully is nicely proved in the case of Mrs. Sarah Yoakam of Coos county, near Marshfield, Ore., whose husband, a prominent rancher, was killed by a vicious bull some thirteen years ago. In the years Intervening since she and her two daughters have conducted and developed the dairy business in which her husband was engaged. For a good share of the time they have done all the work on the farm, including the care of the dairy herd and the securing of the farm crops. (Union Star)
Indeed Sarah not only succeeded on her farm, but went on to become a leader in the trade.
Sarah Yoakam, who ran her husband’s Coos County dairy upon his death seven years earlier, was voted the first female vice-president of the Oregon State Dairyman’s Association. The next year she became the superintendent of the Dairy Department of the Oregon State Fair. (cooshistory.org)
Now, how exactly this headland came to be known as Yoakam Point is not crystal clear. The acreage was one of 19 locations purchased by the state in 1968. The state wayside simply carried over the accepted name. Oregon Geographic Names suggests the name was in use for “many decades” prior to 1952, attributed to the pioneer family:
For many decades this name has been applied to a small promontory about a mile west of Coos Head just south of the entrance to Coos Bay. It commemorates a family well known in the history of the county. (Oregon Geographic Names, 1952)
Mussel Reef
I think it’s important to include the settler prehistory here. Before the name Yoakam Point gained acceptance among the settlers of the area, it seems like “Mussel Reef” was in play. The area was inhabited by the Coos people from time immemorial. This particular shoreline was an abundant intertidal zone rich with mollusks and crustaceans used for both food and regalia. Sites of archeological importance are documented here.
A half mile west of Yoakam Point, sits Chiefs Island, on which stands the defunct Cape Arago Lighthouse. The island was repatriated to the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw in 2013. That site contains a very large, deep midden, indicating an extended presence on the island. It is closed to the public.
Coos Bay was a distinctly rich cultural area prior to Euro-American settlement. it brought together five tribes speaking as many different languages (or dialects) within short distance each other: Miluk (Coos), Hanis (Coos), Quuiich (Lower Umpqua) Nasomah dialect (Lower Coquille) and Athabaskan (Upper Coquille).
Noting the abundant natural resources and prospects for establishing a port, early settlers converged on the peninsula in the center of the bay, incorporating the town of Empire City next to a Miluk village, about 10 miles inland from Yoakam Point. Empire City is today the Empire neighborhood of the city of Coos Bay. Within just a few years of the first settlers arriving, the tribes were forcibly removed and eventually relocated to the Siletz Agency of the Coast Reservation. Like most treaties in the west, promises were broken when the US congress systematically failed to ratify them.
Thanks for reading and listening. I’m grateful for your interest. Coast Headland Suite is available under the artist name Listening Spot on all streaming platforms (Spotify, Apple, Tidal, Amazon, YouTube…) Friday, January 17th.
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Hello. It’s 2025. How can that be? I look at the number and think, that’s a futuristic number. Wasn’t the future supposed to be easier? Something tells me 2025 will not be easy. Still, I’m determined to meet it with can-do attitude.
For now though, let’s ease into it. With that it mind I chose this recording, Forest Stream Suite. The environmental sound was captured last June in Forest Park, Portland, Oregon; a place we’ll be revisiting throughout the coming year.
Many of the seasonal streams were, by that time, down to a trickle. The percussive sound at the top of the recording is one such a trickle, a thread of water falling over a stone, as captured by a homemade hydrophone.
The hydrophone is a simple design incorporating a ~$1 bulk-supply 27mm contact mic, a kombucha bottle screw cap, a coin (for ballast), a 1/8th inch stereo cord, a swatch of duct tape, and a couple dips in liquid plastic. I was instructed in the ways of DIY contact mic wizardry by the gifted sound artist Marcus Fischer at a workshop hosted by Oregon Contemporary about a month prior. Thanks Marcus and Oregon Contemporary!
Hydrophone recording is something I hope to do more of in the coming year. Maybe I’ll invest in something a little more sensitive. Or possibly a stereo pair?
The instrumentation follows the pattern of previous Listening Spot releases: One continuous field recording and several distinct musical movements in the same key. With the hydrophone click track as a jumping-off point, this one reaches out its sound tentacles in new directions, without letting go of the familiar.
There’s some of my favorite wildlife belting it out here: American Robin, Pacific Wren, Wilson’s Warbler, Yellow Warbler… While listening, I can picture the dappled light of the forest.
Thanks for tuning in. I’m grateful for your interest. Forest Stream Suite is available under the artist name Listening Spot on all streaming platforms (Spotify, Apple, Tidal, Amazon, YouTube…) Friday, January 3rd. I hope you can spend some quiet time with it.
Lastly, I took some time to write some reflections on my first year of being on Substack a couple days ago. I didn’t send it out as a newsletter, because it was mostly written as an exercise to clarify some things for myself. I’m mentioning it here for those who may be curious about the platform, my impressions as a musician, and some intentions in 2025. Happy New Year!
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Welcome back. Let’s finish our stroll along the Columbia and find out more about this intriguing place. In the first installment we learned how Warrior Point got its name, and about and the rock formation that became the geological cornerstone of Sauvie Island. In this conclusion we arrive at Warrior Rock Lighthouse, the smallest lighthouse in Oregon, and the only one in operation far from the coastline. For this installment I must thank the kind folks at warriorrock.org for sharing several hard-to-find photos and shedding light on some scarcely known stories about the lighthouse.
Pre-contact
The closest Native American village to Warrior Point on Sauvie Island was Namuit, unmentioned by Lewis & Clark, excepting “2 Houses” drawn on a map in the vicinity of the Warrior Point trailhead is today. I suppose it is worth pointing out that “Warrior Rock” and “Warrior Point” describe two different geological places about a half mile away from each other, and are often interchanged.
In 1959 amateur archeologist Emory Stone said of Namuit, “Originally a very large village, it is now completely washed away. Banks of camp rock extend for a quarter of a mile along the river bank. Large collections were made from it as it was eroding away about the turn of the century.” He added, “[It] must have been quite old, for traces of fire are found eight or more feet deep beneath the silt.”
Warrior Point was a canoe burial ground. Native Americans practiced this form of burial all along the lower Columbia at promontory sites. Canoes were elevated or placed in trees with the dead wrapped in cedar bark blankets with their belongings. The bows of the canoes pointed toward the ocean.
John Kirk Townsend described Mount Coffin, a canoe burial site 13 miles downriver, in his 1841 narrative:
"[the burial site] consisted of a great number of canoes containing bodies of Indians, each being carefully wrapped in blankets, and supplied with many of his personal effects in the form of weapons and implements...wrapped in his mantle of skins, laid in his canoe with his paddle, his fishing-spear, and other implements beside him, and placed aloft on some rock or eminence overlooking the river, or bay, or lake that he had frequented. He is fitted out to launch away upon those placid streams…which are prepared in the next world.”
Warrior Rock Lighthouse
The light house was erected in 1889, a wood framed building with a shed roof on a tall sandstone foundation. The original 1500 lb. fog bell, cast in 1855, tolled for 30 years in a lighthouse at Cape Disappointment prior to installation at Warrior Rock.
In 1912, the Lighthouse Service requested $2,000 to purchase 1.61 acres near the lighthouse on which stood a “fairly good dwelling,” which was being occupied by the keeper. The desired amount was appropriated on October 22, 1913, and the dwelling and other buildings on the adjoining land were acquired by the government. (lighthousefriends.com)
Looking closely at this photo we can see quite a number of buildings, including a large mill building in the right background, where there are now none.
When the river was high, the tower’s sandstone foundation and surrounding land would often be underwater. At those times, DeRoy rode an aerial tram he concocted by stringing a cable from a tree near the dwelling to the lighthouse (lighthousefriends.com)
Waterway Woes
Warrior Rock Lighthouse has seen its share of incidents.
1898 - US revenue cutter Commodore Perry ran on a reef a short distance above Warrior Rock. “Pilots familiar with the river always give the reef a wide berth. The steamer Manzanillo had her bottom torn out there 10 years ago, and about 20 years ago the old steamship Sierra Nevada was impaled on the reef.”
1910 - US Lighthouse Tender Heather ran aground on rocks near Warrior Rock. Not badly damaged.
1927 - The tug Cricket was sunk near Warrior Rock lighthouse when she collided head on with the steamer Wapama.
1928 - A new light to aid river navigation was established on a sunken rock about one fourth of a mile above the Warrior Rock Lighthouse.
1930 - The tug Dix which propelled the barge Swan and provided electric current to the floating dance pavilion was found in 50 feet of water a short distance above Warrior Rock lighthouse. Eight people were killed in the collision with the schooner Davenport.
1969 - The lighthouse was struck by a barge. While surveying the damage, the 1500 lb. bell fell to the shoreline and cracked.
The bell now resides at the entrance of the Columbia County Courthouse.
The current lighthouse owners added, “The lighthouse gets hit by boats more frequently than we would expect. We've heard of two instances in the 90’s.”
The Warrior Rock formation creates an unusual depth near shore of about 50 ft. Possibly more. “We've seen fishermen catch and release some crazy huge sturgeon there,” the owners shared. One wonders what detritus may have found repose in those waters.
Lighthouse Keeper’s Home For Sale
In my research I found a 1973 Oregonian real estate ad listing the lighthouse caretaker’s home, a shop, and two acres offered at $39,000. Perhaps we can conclude this was the government liquidating obsolete structures, following lighthouse rebuilding and modernization?
Adjusted for inflation that’s about $280,000 in 2024 dollars. That may sound cheap to some now, but I suspect it would have required a unique buyer then. Here is another photo showing the bungalow in relation to the lighthouse from the early days, circa 1905. Looks like a peaceful homestead!
Here is a closer look at the home—date unknown—but given the size of the trees in the background and what looks like a composite shingle roof, I’d guess the 1960’s?
Here it is today:
The house burned down in the early 1990’s. The current property owners say, “We've heard from one of the people involved who hiked out to see the place one day that a couple of teenagers were out there when they accidentally caught the place on fire. They tried to get the Sauvie Island Fire Department out there, who announced it wasn't their jurisdiction, and then the St Helens/Columbia County services also claimed it wasn't theirs. They finally got their fathers out there to try to put it out but at that point it was too late.”
The trail to the lighthouse today leads by a discretely positioned shipping container near the freestanding chimney and foundation of the old home. It is still private property. The current owners have a website about the lighthouse and environs at warriorrock.org. Much to my surprise and delight, one of them is a musician, sound artist, composer, and educator. So cool!
St. Helens Shipbuilding Company, Island Lumber Company
Many derelict features of post-Euro-American settlement human activity can still be found all around the point: pilings, bricks, concrete, rotting wood and rusting pipe.
The pilings on Warrior Point represent the remains of the Island Lumber Company, part of a large complex of lumber industries located on the northern part of Sauvie Island and directly across Multnomah Channel at St. Helens during the late 1800s and early 1900s. Sawmills were established as early as the 1850s in St. Helens. By 1874, Charles and James Muckle operated a mill in that city and owned interests in nearby timber. In 1904 the mill burned and in 1909 the Charles R. McCormick Company bought the site and constructed a new mill. The new mill proved to be extremely productive. To accommodate larger ships than the schooners, that were the most common means of shipping, Charles McCormick formed the St. Helens Shipbuilding Company at a site just south of Warrior Point on Sauvie Island. After the acquisition of additional timber lands, he and his brother Hamlin formed the St. Helens Timber Company in 1912. In 1920, the McCormicks contracted to produce 250 million feet of railroad ties. To fill the order they formed the Island Lumber Company and built a mill and a shipping pier at Warrior Point on Sauvie Island. (ifish.net)
One of the most storied ships turned out by the St. Helens Shipbuilding Company was the Wapama, launched in 1915, surviving almost 100 years before being dismantled in 2013. Once part of the National Maritime Museum in San Francisco, it was the last example of some 225 wooden steam schooners that served along the Pacific coast. The NMM still hosts a PDF of the Wapama brochure. Detail-oriented readers may recall it was Wapama that was involved in a collision that sunk the tug Cricket off Warrior Rock in 1927.
Between 1912 and 1927 the St. Helens Shipbuilding Company on Sauvie Island just south of Warrior Point launched 42 wooden ships. (Wikipedia)
Conclusion
And so we come to an end in our learning and listening series in this place once called the Wapato Valley. Little more than 200 years ago it was the domain of the Chinookan people. Today it is a bustling corridor of commerce, industry, and recreation too. Here Sauvie Island Wildlife Area, Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge and Shillapoo Wildlife Area create an aggregated wildlife conservation area on both sides of the Columbia measuring about 20,000 acres in total. In many ways, these lands are little changed.
Warrior Rock Soundwalk Part 2 is notably quieter than Part 1. In truth, the soundscape isn’t particularly quiet here. It feels quiet, but there is a low frequency hum produced by I-5 and Hwy 30 that settles in here like a fog. I removed much of that with a low shelf EQ to approximate a less industrialized time. And, much like the nearby Oaks to Wetlands Trail Soundwalk yielded an anthropogenic alternative soundscape with Four Trains, I could have made a nautical version from the cut-outs here: Four Ships? Another time, perhaps.
On the way back we hear the groaning of sea lions out in the middle of the river. This is a photo I snapped on a the opposite shore five days earlier. I love the sweetening of the acoustics at this distance.
Thanks for joining me on this survey of sights, sounds and stories from the Wapato Valley!
Warrior Rock Soundwalk Part 1 is out now on all streaming services.
Warrior Rock Soundwalk Part 2 is available on all streaming platforms (Spotify, Apple, Tidal, Amazon, YouTube…) tomorrow, Friday, December 20th.
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The Warrior Point Trail is a 7 mile out-and-back stroll on a dirt lane along the bank of the Columbia River among cottonwood forests, grassy meadows, and several lakes. The lakes are never really in clear view, but in the winter you are aware of them, being the preferred locales of sometimes raucous Tundra Swans.
I started off walking along the water, joining the proper trail the better part of a mile north. The light, fine rain sounded like tiny pin pricks on my hat and coat. The wake of a passing barge was still settling, even as it passed out of sight. I saw a cloud of Canadian Geese coalesce in the sky downriver and disappear as soon as they had come. The river was wide and serene. A crow winged by with a fish in its mouth.
I zoomed in on the destination downriver, Warrior Rock Lighthouse. The smallest lighthouse in Oregon.
Why is it called Warrior Rock, you might ask? Well, like so many things around here the words were chosen from the perspective of the explorer and put on a map, and it stuck. The tale of the encounter that inspired that name, most likely with the Cathlapotle band of Chinooks, goes like this:
On October 28, 1792, a British exploration party paddling up the Columbia in the ship’s launch and cutter boats encountered twenty-three canoes with about two hundred Chinookans aboard, most of them wearing armored vests and holding weapons. Lt. William Broughton, captain of the HMS Chatham, the tender vessel for George Vancouver’s HMS Discovery, led the British force. Seeing his men clearly outnumbered, Broughton ordered the launch’s swivel gun loaded and primed for discharge. He loaded his own musket and fired a ball in the water to forewarn and frighten the Chinook. While the only violence during the encounter came from the British mariners, the place-name Broughton affixed to the place—Point Warrior—represents his characterization of the Native canoe men. (oregonencyclopedia.org)
The denouement was described by the ship’s clerk, “[seeing] that our intentions were as peacable, as their own, they took off all their War Garments, and every man seem’d eager to dispose of his Bows and Arrows for old Buttons, Beads, etc.”
The rock formation the lighthouse was built on is the reason Sauvie Island exists. During the last ice age, several cataclysmic flash flood events scoured out the Columbia Basin, originating from ice dam breaches in the area of modern day Missoula, MT. Looking up on the hillsides of that Montana college town one can still make out the terraced waterline pattern of a vast glacial lake. When all that water coursed through this section of river, it uncovered the Warrior Rock formation in the basin. The resistant grey limestone formation acted like a dam, holding back sediment deposits along its southwest axis. Thus, Sauvie Island is only about 10,000 years young, give or take a couple thousand years.
Along the way I stopped to watch a family of Pileated Woodpeckers.
Bald Eagles abound here.
I completed this instrumental score fairly recently, so the discerning listener may note the sound palette bearing a resemblance to the recently launched Listening Spot series: instrument voices that function like string arrangements but were created from pedal steel guitar, dobro, and mellotron are used for the first time here. It strikes me that these are like sedimentary layers of sound deposited against the backbone of (mostly) Pianet electric piano.
I tend to be quite slow on my walks, especially when there are so many interesting things to see and hear. As a result I came away with several hours of source audio. I decided to cut that down to just shy of an hour, and subsequently split that in two because I kept falling asleep when listening to the mixes at night.
On the whole it’s quite reflective. A good end-of-year listen, I think. So I’m keeping the entirety of Part 1 unrestricted, for all who may want to listen to it on this platform, or via their podcast app. Part two will be released next week.
Warrior Rock Soundwalk Part 1 is available on all streaming platforms (Spotify, Apple, Tidal, Amazon, YouTube…) tomorrow, Friday, December 13th.
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Time now for Listening Spot. This is the third effort filed under the self-describing pseudonym, with the recipe being a long field recording accompanied by a number of musical movements comprising a greater whole. Put simply, it’s just meant to be more dreamy.
For this outing we have left the Columbia River, and the Wapato Valley (aka Portland Basin), where we have settled in for a few months. (But barely, we’re not officially done here. There’s two more installments over the next two weeks.) Oaks Bottom is a mixed wetland on the Willamette River in Portland, about 10 river miles from the Columbia confluence, and the southern edge of Wapato Valley. In some ways it approximates what the Columbia shorelines would have looked like 100 years ago: marshy wonderlands where cottonwood trees thrive.
Oaks Bottom was my go-to destination for many years. I became quite familiar with the soundscape over time. I can usually identify the wildlife there by ear. If listening back to a recording I can tell you what season it was made, down to the month. My favorite season: Spring. It’s the best.
In this recording we hear the Black-headed Grosbeak. Instantly, that places it in the likely realm of May or June.
The sound of the cottonwood trees is another hint. In May, the leaves are young and pliant. By June they are big and broad, clattering in the breezes. Here is an excellent video on the sound of Cottonwood leaves.
Even in winter cottonwood leaves continue have their own sound—underfoot. Where other leaves—maples for example—now have the consistency of tissue paper on the moist ground, cottonwoods scrape against each other like coated cardstock valentines. Scrunch, scrunch. Scriff, skrich.
I think that’s it for this one. Cottonwoods Suite is available on all streaming platforms (Spotify, Apple, Tidal, Amazon, YouTube…) Friday, December 6th. I hope you can spend some quiet time with it.
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I’m trying something new: a short-form twist on my soundwalk formula, folding in my photography. So here is a pilot episode of sorts. I hope you enjoy this little string of impressions in sound and vision.
Go on and hit that play button above. Let’s see what we can see, and hear what we can hear.
It’s a densely overcast morning. As soon as I hit the trail, I’m checking out a Townsend’s Chipmunk. It’s smaller than my hand, munching on a seed, I think. Do you hear the click-click-click-click? That’s my camera. That’s the sound it makes when I want to take pictures in low light without a tripod. It takes multiple shots and stitches them together. The chipmunk is still, and then poof it’s gone.
It rained all night long. The trees are saturated and dripping.
Little streams and rivulets course down the upper reaches of Balch Creek Canyon. I love listing to their ephemeral burble. Across the canyon, the tops of Douglas-fir emerge from the mist. The hillside is breathing.
I’ve been on a mushroom kick, so I’m scanning the stumps and nurse logs on the side of the trail. I see a slug munching on fungi. A petit dejeuner.
I hear Golden-crowned kinglets up in the canopy, and a Pacific Wren chipping over the rise.
I’ve come back down to the Wildwood Trail. It’s an easy stroll here as it rounds the contour of the Tualatin mountains above the upper reaches of these NW Portland neighborhoods built out in the early 1900s. The din of highway 30 and the NW industrial park washes up these slopes. The train whistles are ghostly, bouncing off the fir colonnades. Look, rays of sunlight are breaking through.
On one of these firs I spy Fairy Parachutes (Marasmiellus candidus) nestled in the saturated moss. I can’t think of a more perfect, evocative name for these. The diameters of these are less than a dime’s. These are the only ones I find today.
On a nearby stump I see a similarly very delicate duo. Like so many, I can’t identify it. Do you know?
Around the corner I spy a coral fungus (Clavulina coralloides). It’s about two inches tall. Not big. I set my camera down in the duff to capture this angle, and it appears bigger. Click-click-click-click.
I’ve been hearing Red-breasted Nuthatches up high in the canopy. Their calls sounds like little clown shoes on parade to me. Honk honk honk. The only bird that I attempt to photograph, other than some Dark-eyed Juncos is this Brown Creeper.
Brown Creepers always climb up tree trunks, and they are very on task, so you’ll often get good looks at them in the forest. What does it have in its beak?
Brown Creepers have one of the sweetest songs. Trees, trees, beautiful trees they sing in a pitch so high that many a septuagenarian (age 70+) can no longer hear them. With that in mind, I try to savor their singing when it’s quiet.
On the north side of the rise, I now see the firs and ferns backlit by the rays of sun breaking through. They glisten with a million raindrops clinging to them, like so many berries.
This purple capped mushroom on the side of the trail is coated with bits of soil from the barrage of the morning rain. It stretches out above the fir cones like a battle-worn survivor.
Nearby I find this scene and try to puzzle out a scenario from the forensic evidence. I don’t get far, but the words “string cheese incident" pop into my head, and I visualize a squirrel.
One thing that quickly becomes clear about fungi photography is the extent to which it’s difficult to communicate scale. These are miniscule, testing the limits of my camera.
I identify them as belonging to the large Mycena genus, commonly known as bonnets. Wikipedia says:
Mycenas are hard to identify to species and some are distinguishable only by microscopic features such as the shape of the cystidia. Some species are edible, while others contain toxins, but the edibility of most is not known, as they are likely too small to be useful in cooking.
and..
Over 58 species are known to be bioluminescent, creating a glow known as foxfire.
I wonder if these guys glow?
As I work my way back, I’m struck by how everything looks a little different with the sun being a few degrees higher on the horizon. Late-morning light. Time to head home.
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This week we are crossing the river from Sauvie Island in Oregon to Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge (NWR) in Washington state. The Northern tip of the island is directly across from where we are walking today: on recently restored trail in the refuge known as the Oaks to Wetland Trail.
In 2019 hundreds of Douglas Fir trees were felled and removed from this area to encourage “oak release”. An oak woodland used to reign supreme here, thanks to low-level fires managed by the indigenous people, keeping the land relatively clear for game grazing and promoting berry plants.
Remember how I was complaining Oregon state agencies presently provide almost nothing in terms of education and memorialization on Sauvie Island about what was once may have been the most densely populated area of Native Americans in what is now the United States? Ridgefield NWR has done something pretty remarkable in contrast, by facilitating the construction of the Cathlapotle Plankhouse.
The building is based on more than a decade’s worth of archaeological research at the site, which began in the 1990s where a large village of the Cathlapotle Nation once stood. It took over 100 volunteers two years to complete it, and the official opening ceremony was conducted on March 29, 2005. (nps.gov)
For the past 20 years the Cathlapotle plankhouse has served the modern Chinook Tribe as the site of their annual winter gatherings.
Standing up close to the structure one has to marvel at the sheer density of the plankhouse. The planks for the roof and walls are >2 inches thick, and >2 feet wide old-growth Western redcedar. Both the trees, and 3500 hours of volunteer labor were all donated. If one had to itemize the cost of the project at market prices today, it would likely have a multi-million dollar price tag.
To the layperson it resembles so many old barns that dot the surrounding rural landscape, but to those with an understanding of construction materials, and the added time and cost of working in the old ways, it’s truly a marvel; something the many contributors can be proud of.
Our soundwalk begins more or less here, at the plankhouse among Oregon white oaks, looking out over a landscape of lakes and wetlands. Not far off the remains of Cathlapotle village (numbering fourteen houses with an estimated population of 900 in 1806) slumber in the soil, just out of sight, near the Columbia River shore.
Cathlapotle was one of the largest of the Wapato Valley villages—of at least 16 villages in all—sharing a common dialect, and ways of life. Explorers Lewis & Clark put it this way:
All the tribes in the neighborhood of Wapato island, we have considered as Multnomahs, not because they are in any degree subordinate to that nation; but they all seem to regard the Multnomahs as the most powerful.
Multnomah, on Sauvie Island, as we discovered a few weeks ago had a population of some 2400 in 1806, diminished by the introduction of smallpox in the 1780’s. In the late 1830’s the village was burned to the ground following a devastating malaria epidemic that left too few survivors to tend to the dead.
“River erosion, development and looting have destroyed virtually all of the Chinook town sites. But Cathlapotle was spared,” said Kenneth M. Ames, PSU professor of anthropology who lead the archeological investigation that took place in the 1990’s. Ames’ excavation revealed:
*Radiocarbon dates on charcoal from hearths place occupation from at least 900 years ago to the 1840s.
*Various pieces of evidence indicate possibly two occupations of the site, with the last one having been continuously occupied for 1,500 years by up to 1,400 people, Ames said. He believes there was an earlier occupation as far back as 2,000 years ago. (The Oregonian, Aug 7, 1994)
As I walked the trail beneath a cloudy sky, I tried to imagine the area in that pre-contact state, as I usually do. I think it would have looked similar, but of course it would have sounded much different. There would have been no leaf blowers or dogs barking from the expanding residential areas over the hill. No airplanes overhead. And, perhaps most distinctly for this site, there would have been no trains rumbling past.
Access to this section of the refuge requires a short walk on a pedestrian bridge over train tracks. Trains glide by frequently. My quiet to loud ratio here was about 65 / 35. As usual, I spliced together the quiet sections of my walk to create this idealized pre-industrial soundwalk soundscape. I used my binaural Sennheiser Ambeo Headset for this recording, which performs quite well in the rain, if it’s not too windy. The mics were tucked into the concavity of my ears, sheltered from rain drops. The soundscape is really quiet and tranquil. Tundra Swans and Varied Thrushes sound so reverberant and sweet. My score is textural, spacious, and plaintive, I would say.
It occurred to me that I could chain together the out-takes for an alternate “selectively industrialized” version. Voila: Four Trains Soundwalk was released a couple days ago as a flipside to this one. This was a surprise hit in my own listening habits. I found myself oddly soothed by the low frequency rumbles at bedtime, lulled by the anticipation of the iron beast transits.
That’s it for this week. Once again, thank you for indulging me, for being here, for listening. Oaks to Wetland Trail Soundwalk is available on all streaming platforms (Spotify, Apple, Tidal, Amazon, YouTube…) tomorrow, Friday, November 15th.
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Today we have a bit of a departure. This 31 minute soundwalk was recorded at Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge on January 28th, 2024. It is the flipside—both figuratively and literally—to the upcoming Oaks to Wetland Trail Soundwalk. I’m calling it Four Trains Soundwalk.
Stretches of quiet and stretches of train noise were intertwined in my lived experience, but as always, effectuating a pre-industrial soundscape requires substantial editing in the way of splices and EQ. Rather than let these appealing train recordings become so much digital ash, I’ve compiled them here. Visually speaking, this is what that looks like. The spectrograms below are basically just heat maps for sound. The first image is the natural soundscape—the birds, the creek, and the rain. The second is the four trains. (Not preserved is any aircraft noise.)
Think of this as a trainspotting album. Trainlistening? It’s really quite a treat to have just trains, wildlife and rain sounds. The low frequency hums, the clank-clank, the doppler effects, and the periodic pneumatic “psst” sounds are quite relaxing. The wildlife, creek, and rain sounds soften the industrial edges. It’s a top 3 insomnia / get-to-sleep album for me over the past several months. I’m happy to share it with you finally.
For my instrumental score, I leaned heavily into textural synth drones mirroring the energy of the passing trains.
I hope you enjoy it!
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I love oak trees. Here in the Pacific Northwest, our western forests are dominated by conifers, so oaks have something of an exotic look to my eye. It wasn’t always this way.
Here in the Willamette Valley, oaks thrived in the rain shadow of the Coast Range. The entire 1.5 million hectare valley was not long ago dominated by native prairies and oak savannas.
This is one of the most strongly human-modified ecoregions on the continent, with an estimated 99.5% decline of native prairies and oak savannas. Despite this devastating loss, the vegetation of this region and its history are fascinating, and the remaining remnants are often packed with rare and endemic species. (oneearth.org)
In the last 175 years we have lost 98% of the oak savanna habitat here.
(From: Rivers to Ridges Oak Habitat Flyer)
It’s not lost on me that, just a 30 minute trip from my home, a 100 acre oak savanna on Sauvie Island is a pretty special place. Not just because it’s scarce habitat, but also because it’s very tranquil, buffered from road and city noise by placid lakes and distance. So we’re back, visiting Oak Island, the “island” within an island:
This time I pointed my most sensitive mics (a Rode NT-1 stereo pair in ORTF placement) toward the long axis of the woodland, recording a detailed, spacious soundscape. One can walk around the margins of this woodland on the Oak Island Nature Trail, but there are actually no trails through it. It really preserves a sense of mystery about it, I have to say. You are an outsider looking in, here.
Oak Savanna Suite is the second in a new series of more calm, more atmospheric, more classically ambient releases collected under the pseudonym artist name Listening Spot.
As with the first release, Crane Lake Suite, Oak Savanna Suite is a group of self-contained instrumental movements of varying character in the same key. The instrumentation sounds vaguely orchestral, like a pastorale with flowing legato phrasing, but it’s less melodically rigid, and not built up with traditional orchestral instrument sounds.
In fact, in the beginning it’s difficult to discern basic musical patterns: Meter is elastic, melodic phrases are indistinct and unrepeated, and the music barely rises above the soundscape. All this changes by degrees as the suite progresses. I hope you get to spend some quality time with it.
If you enjoy it, please follow Listening Spot wherever you get your music, and consider sharing it with one other person. I’m heartened by the initial response, but also aware of the challenge of building momentum for a new thing, so I’m grateful for any support you can offer.
Oak Savanna Suite is available on all streaming platforms (Spotify, Apple, Tidal, Amazon, YouTube…) tomorrow, Friday, November 8th.
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Rentenaar Road is just a flood-prone, gravel road through blackberry briars on the east side the Sauvie Island Wildlife Area. It does not look particularly special or inviting. But it is. It’s a portal to the kingdom of birds that have come to this island every winter for time immemorial. And, unless you’re there to hunt, it’s as close as you can get to the large flocks of Snow Geese, Canada Geese, Tundra Swans, Sandhill Cranes and various ducks and coots.
The sound of these large flocks is visceral.
A tradeoff of coming here though, for the uninitiated, is the manifold shotgun rifle reports that distract from the enjoyment of the natural soundscape. (I’m sure for the hunter it’s an exciting sound, like the chime of a slot machine for a gambler. Tomato, tomawto.) The island is also under a commercial flight corridor; the noise of which is inescapable.
Here’s a tip: Check the hunting season calendar to visit on an off day, or come in February, when there’s still lots of birds and the duck hunting season is concluded. Any reports you hear should be distant and less frequent. And, maybe bring some galoshes.
I came on a gray February day and walked down the lane, until I came to the flooded area, and I just stood there with water all around me, soaking up the wildlife sound until a rain shower came.
You know, I often feel like my soundwalks are kind of like Tootsie Pops; the sweetest part encased inside. You have to spend some time to get to it. That’s the way I feel about the end of Rentenaar Road Soundwalk. I just love the sound of the gentle rain starting, falling on the pond-like puddle; the way the rain seems to calm the thousands of birds nearby. I quietly take off my recording hat, and hold it close to the puddle surface. It’s an entrancing sizzle that concludes the piece. I hope you can spend some time with it.
Rentenaar Road Soundwalk is available on all streaming platforms (Spotify, Apple, Tidal, Amazon, YouTube…) tomorrow, Friday, October 18th.
Two more things:
* Yesterday I offered an amuse-bouche alternate of this walk with galoshes on. Check out Rentenaar Wade Soundwalk here:
* Also this Friday, Nov. 1st, Cultural Norms (20th Anniversary Edition) by my old indie pop band Blanket Music will be released. It features several bonus tracks, with parallels and through-lines to the state of the nation today. Hear it on all streaming platforms. (Spotify, Apple, Tidal, Amazon, and YouTube…)
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We’re back on Sauvie Island for a special bonus soundwalk. Or maybe it’s a soundwade. Feel free to play the audio as you read on.
A satellite view of Sauvie Island reveals a squiggly teardrop-shape island about the size of Manhattan. The upper half of that teardrop has an assemblage of lakes that resembles a heart with chambers and valves and arteries. Now look closer; there is a thin straight line running perpendicular on the right side of our view, surrounded by fields, just about where the aorta would emerge. That is Rentenaar Road. If you’re not there to hunt, it’s as close as you can get to see and hear the spectacle.
In a wet year, the road can resemble a canal:
So before I reveal Rentenaar Road Soundwalk tomorrow, let’s throw on some galoshes and wade in! I’m happy to present Rentenaar Wade Soundwalk as an amuse-bouche:
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Wapato Park is pretty great, partially because it’s easily overlooked and therefore never crowded. Its full name is Wapato Access Greenway State Park. It’s a sleeper park, the kind you stumble on if you like studying maps. The small gravel parking lot trailhead is on a dead end road, and easy to miss. Interestingly, it’s the only trailhead on Sauvie Island that you don’t have to pay $10 ($30/yr) to park at. In the winter the trail can be quite muddy, in the late spring and summer it can get buggy, and if you’re really unlucky, your car can get busted into. Still, it’s worth a visit.
On a mild February day earlier this year I strolled around its shores, and down to the dock on the river. This soundscape records the wildlife and ambience of winter. You’ll hear Common Raven, spirited and unusual vocalizations from Stellar’s Jays, a Pileated Woodpecker, Ruby-crowned and Golden-crowned Kinglets, and all kinds of water birds. Sometimes you even see Tundra Swans in small numbers here.
Reminiscences of Louis Labonte (1900) recalls life on Scappoose Creek near Sauvie's Island, as a teenage boy, from about 1833 to 1836. Labonte [Jr.] was the son of Astor expedition member Louis Labonte [Sr.] and his native wife, daughter of Clatsop Chief Coboway.
Game on the ponds of the island was very abundant, consisting of deer, bear, and panthers and wildcats; and beaver were still plentiful; but the waterfowl of the most magnificent kind, at their season of passage, and, indeed much of the year, almost forbade the hunter to sleep.
Indeed, the lake was so covered by the flock as almost to conceal the water.
So we can forgive Capt. William Clark for his 1805 journal remark referring to the swans, geese and cranes: “they were emensely numerous and their noise horrid.” Here we have another recollection of wildlife din riotous enough to make sleeping difficult.
And, here I am thinking about this place prior to Euro-American settlement again, prior to industrialization and the inescapable anthropogenic noise coming from the commercial aircraft corridor above, the highway to the west, and the motorboats in the channel.
Now, you might be thinking to yourself, boy Chad sure brings up indigenous people a lot, for being a field recording and music guy. It’s true. I think it’s because I get so tuned into natural soundscape, that I’m curious to imagine all the details of what life was like two hundred-plus years ago. When I’m editing my field recordings with splices and EQ filters and cut & paste techniques to approximate a pre-industrial quietude, I can’t help but think people used to be much more in tune with wildlife and weather.
In the vicinity of Wapato Park, human history goes deeper than is often discussed. According to amateur archeologist Emory Strong, there are three archeological points of interest nearby:
MU 6. Cath-la-nah-qui-ah. six houses and 400 inhabitants. Nathaniel Wyeth built Fort William near this town but the residents had all died in the pestilence by then. Dr. Mclaughlin had all the houses burned. Excavations reveal everything covered with a film of cedar charcoal.
MU 7. The site of Wyeth’s Fort William
MU 8. One of the prehistoric sites that appears to be very old. There are no game or fish bones, and the midden has a different character from the more recent sites. (Stone Age on the Columbia River, 1958)
[“MU” here is just an archeological prefix indicating Multnomah County. The modern trinomial standard now includes a code for Oregon as a prefix: 35 MU 6 and so on.]
Each is an interesting story. Let’s discuss.
(35 MU 6) Cath-la-nah-qui-ah (or Gat-la-na-koa-iq), was a Multnomah tribe village on Multnomah Channel. The size estimate of 400 inhabitants belongs to Lewis and Clark. This would have been about half the size of the main Multnomah village on the other side of the island, in that time period.
This is what that milieu looked like on the day I visited.
This is what the plank houses looked like 200 years ago. They varied in size from 15’ x 30’ all the way up to 30’ x 400’:
This is what the inside of a plankhouse looked like:
Today, if not obliterated by erosion, or dike building, one would only expect to see slight depression in the soil on the site where one of these plankhouses stood. In the early 1800’s there were hundreds of them on the lower Columbia.
The pestilence of the 1830’s is now widely regarded to have been a malaria epidemic. Sauvie Island tribes—perhaps owing to the marshy landscape— were particularly devastated.
The Indians believed it had been introduced by an American ship involved in the salmon trade, the Owyhee, commanded by John Dominis. They may have been right, as the ship had visited malarial ports before sailing to the Columbia.
The impact of fever and ague on Native people in Oregon was earthshaking. In the 1820s, they had been by far the majority population in the region; by the early 1840s, they were in the minority. (Disease Epidemics among Indians, 1770s-1850s)
Dr. McLoughlin was the Chief Factor of Fort Vancouver, upriver about 10 miles. This was the center of operations and trade for the entire Pacific Northwest, on behalf of French-Canadian Hudson’s Bay Co (HBC). In addition to the to the Cath-la-nah-qui-ah village, HBC men also burned the larger Multnomah village (35 MU 2, 800 inhabitants, originally much larger) on the east side of the island, presumably in an effort to curb the epidemic.
In an 1895 article for The Oregonian, pioneer John Minto reminisced about the “old Multnomah nation” and its appearance fifty years before, in 1845.
We landed and camped for the night at the site of the last Multnomah village, but at which that time there were no Indians nor sign of recent Indian life. There was however an extensive city of the dead, a cemetery laid out in streets as wide as the plat of Riverview Cemetery at Portland. The dead were deposited on structures of wide split cedar boards three or more inches thick, set upright; sometimes three tiers of horizontal boards one above the other, mortised into and secured by twisted inner bark of cedar. On these the dead were laid wrapped in cedar bark.
He included this remark about what he heard:
It was rare that a traveller should pass a village at night without hearing at the same time the women wailing for the dead and the monotonous beat of a tom-tom.
Now, I know that maybe this all seems like a tangent. But, these are testimonials both to the look and sound of that time that I think is not just interesting, but worth sharing, particularly on public lands where these events happened. And for my part, why not include them with narratives about my soundscape recordings also bearing witness to the land?
Just 8 years after Minto’s observations of the Multnomah village site, in 1853, Simon Morgan Reeder settled the donation land claim (originally belonging to one N. D. Miller) on which once stood the largest village of the island. Today the main road on the east side of the island, Reeder Road, bears his name.
Now let us turn to (35 MU 7) Fort William, the abandoned effort to set up a trading post on Sauvie Island by Nathaniel J. Wyeth, rivaling HBC, on behalf of American investors in 1834. Two roadside monuments have been erected nearby.
Let’s be clear: these are monuments to a failed business venture. Upon arrival, Wyeth saw opportunity in the Natives’ misfortune, writing in his journals "providence has made room for me and with doing them [Natives] more injury than I should if I had made room for myself viz Killing them off."[3]
Wyeth had many setbacks in his attempt to establish Fort William. In 1835 one of his men was killed at the hands of another. Reading a correspondence from his investors, one might surmise Wyatt was a poor communicator, if not lacking the temperament of a leader.
Finally there is (35 MU 8) “a prehistoric site that appears to be very old. There are no game or fish bones…” Here we are to understand the bones decomposed in the intervening time span. These weren’t the original vegans of the Portland basin. My best attempts to research this further yielded nothing. Were these the ancestors of the Multnomahs, the Chinookan peoples?
The landscape holds a lot of mysteries. I think about them when I listen to it.
Thank you for reading and listening. I hope you enjoy Wapato Park Soundwalk.
Wapato Park Soundwalk is available on all streaming platforms (Spotify, Apple, Tidal, Amazon, YouTube…) tomorrow, Friday, October 18th.
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In early 2022, before I adopted the soundwalk form for a my own musical inquiry, I released a recording called Rain Suite. It featured one long field recording—not captured while walking—with a group of self-contained instrumental movements of varying character in the same key. This is the definition of “suite” in music. It was very much a R&D precursor to my soundwalks. Indeed, it inspired my take on the concept of musical soundwalks.
I followed that up with Island Rain Suite a couple years later, which attempted to cultivate a more atmospheric aesthetic; closer to what people probably think of when you say the word ambient. Smoother, peaceful, more ambiguous. I quite liked the former, and found the latter challenging.
Recently I thought I’d take another step in that direction, and I think I’ve finally found my stride. To make the delineation a little stronger I’m going to attempt a “spin off”. Today, I’m introducing a new recording project pseudonym, designed to be a repository for this particular character of recordings: Listening Spot.
I selected this name because, like “soundwalk”, it is a term in the lexicon of folks who think about, and make a practice of, listening. Also, it wasn't already taken. It’s informative, but not prescriptive. The listener can bring many things to it, and make use of it however occurs to them.
Crane Lake Suite is the first in a half dozen on deck, coming to you over the next five months. Here is the similar, but refreshed new look.
Now then, about Crane Lake Suite… I chose this one for the inaugural release for two reasons: first because it’s recorded at Crane Lake on Sauvie Island, the nexus of Wapato Valley (the subject of the current soundwalk series) in one of the least disturbed, least visited corners of the island. Second, because its name nods to perhaps the most recognizable contribution to the suite form in classical music: Swan Lake.
Crane Lake is positively alive in May. The shallow lake itself breathes slowly with the tide. Carp splash, songbirds sing, woodpeckers drum, heron croak, dragonflies buzz. My composition is minimal, ambiguous and orchestral in feel, without having any traditional orchestral instruments as starting points. From a mixing perspective, I’m marinating my contributions much more deeply in reverb than in the past and taking pains to smooth transitions.
If you enjoy it please follow Listening Spot wherever you get your music, and consider sharing it with one other person. It’s really challenging to build momentum for a new thing, so I’m grateful for any support you can offer in this way.
Crane Lake Suite is available on all streaming platforms (Spotify, Apple, Tidal, Amazon, YouTube…) tomorrow, Friday, October 11th.
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It’s Oct 2nd as I write. The Oak Island area on Sauvie Island, near Portland, Or., closed to recreational use for the season yesterday. For the coming fall and winter, it will serve as a haven for the birds, save for the occasional hunters.
Last winter, when I brought my Soundwalk podcast to Substack, I embarked on a series touching down at certain points in the greater area I referred to as the Columbia Lowlands. I’m pleased to say I’m taking us back there, covering some spots that I didn’t get to last time through. Lewis and Clark called this area the Wappato Valley, after the edible tuber, Wapato, that the Native Americans harvested here on Sauvie Island. The island was also named Wappato Island, the geographical center of Wappato Valley. (Both the double P spelling and the geographic names didn’t really take.) Today, this area is also referred to as the Portland Basin.
Oak Island in the early 1800s would have looked pretty similar to what it looks like now—only without pastures—and the name would have made more sense than it does today, because the land mass used to be surrounded by shallow lakes. Today it more resembles a peninsula.
Like the lakes of the Columbia Bayou (slough) on north side of Portland, many lakes on Sauvie Island were drained in the early 1900’s, and dikes were built, hardening the river bank.
Now, as far as I know, the only marker honoring the stewardship of this land by Native Americans is found a few steps into the Oak Island Nature Trail. There you will see wood post with a line drawing of a two people in a canoe with a QR code underneath.
Focusing on that QR code with a smartphone will pull up a page, offering the following:
Two hundred years ago, Native Americans walked on this very spot. Each year, just before winter, tribes from up and down the Columbia and Willamette rivers gathered on Oak Island for a trading fair which included dancing and festivities.
I want to know more about that. I want to imagine what that looked like, what that sounded like.
Of the environmental sound, Capt. William Clark leaves only this description on November 5th, 1805, from the vicinity of Sauvie Island:
I could not sleep for the noise kept by the Swans, Geese, white & black brant, Ducks etc. on a opposit base, & Sand hill Crane, they were emensely numerous and their noise horrid.
Immensely numerous and horrid. Ha! We will hear numerous birds soon enough in our extended soundwalk survey. For now, on our Oak Island Road Soundwalk, we hear just a handful of bugling Sandhill Cranes, small flocks of geese, wintering songbirds, Pacific tree frogs and light rain showers. Anything but horrid to my ears.
Dig a little deeper and you’ll discover 200 years ago is just the tip of the iceberg. Native Americans lived in various village sites on the island dating back 2500 years; one thousand generations! (Archeological sites upriver near The Dalles increase that time horizon to human occupation of the area going back well over 10,000 years ago).
And all they got was a QR code.
How do we know Native Americans lived on Sauvie Island so long? Well, less than a mile south of Oak Island is Merrybelle Farm. Several archeological digs occurred here, beginning in 1958. Analyzing the projectile points and found here with others found on the island and throughout the region, Richard Pettigrew points to an estimated timeline of village occupation at the Merrybelle site from 600 BCE to 200 CE.
There were 16 known village sites on Sauvie Island. Several have been the subject of formal archeological excavation. Many were picked over by amateur artifact collectors. Some were buried or partially buried under tons of dike soil. One was “sunken”, preserving woven baskets in the mud for up to 700 years. Today there’s no physical reminder of the civilization that existed here before Euro-American settlers; no formal mention or marker, save for a recently renamed bridge. Wapato Bridge. It’s a start. Scholars believe the Wapato Valley once sustained the highest population density north of Mexico in aboriginal times. Isn’t this a story that should be told?
In fourth grade we had a “Pioneer Day”. We came to school in costume: bonnets for the girls. Cowboy hats for boys. Did some boys bring toy guns? Did anyone dress up as an Indian? Seems plausible. We rolled out pasta from scratch, cutting broad noodles for chicken noodle soup “like the pioneers did”. We pledged allegiance to the flag every morning. We did not learn we were inhabiting what was once the cradle of the largest Native American population center, in the Portland Basin, in the United States.
When I walk around on Sauvie Island, I try to picture the long house villages, and the multitude of dugout canoes. When I went paddleboarding on Sturgeon Lake a month ago my feet sank up to my calves in mud as I clumsily launched my craft. I imagined Wapato growing there, plentifully. I imagined Native Americans loosening the root bulbs with their toes, harvesting them in floating baskets. The land of plenty. People of the river.
This soundwalk was recorded on mild December evening last year, on Oak Island Road, adjacent the Wildlife Area. There are half a dozen farm houses on this quiet spur road. It was very relaxing, and nourishing. I totally recommend this to anyone in the area.
Like last time, the composition is almost entirely solo performances strung together. Four voices: piano, a clean Wurlitzer electric piano, a modified Wurlitzer electric piano, and a piano with heavy tape effects. All taking turns. It won’t always be like this, though. In fact, next week I have a whole new direction I’m excited to unveil! Til then, thanks for reading, for listening, for joining me here.
Oak Island Road Soundwalk is available on all streaming platforms (Spotify, Apple, Tidal, Amazon, YouTube…) today, Friday, October 4th.
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