by Elizabeth Pass, Cohort VI
for the February 2023 issue of Headwaters Highlights

February is for love. Not only for romantic love but for all types of love. An important expression of love is to listen, which we do far too little of and is impeded by the barrage of created human noises that daily assaults us. 

My finds for February are all about listening.

Ways to Listen to Nature: Podcasts, Websites, Books, and More!

A fantastic article by Bernie Krause in Anthropocene magazine not only describes Krause’s initial trek into a forest to record its sounds in 1968 but also provides many wonderful resources. The article also links to a TedTalk by Krause, “The voice of the natural world.”

In 1968, Krause founded Wild Sanctuary, an organization dedicated to the recording and archiving of natural soundscapes. This website has so much to explore! The Audio Archive currently has over 4,500 hours of wild soundscapes and more than 15,000 identified life forms. Half of the soundscapes are from habitats that no longer exist, are too radically altered from human endeavor, or have gone silent. There are Sound Design and Audio Art, Workshops, Installations, and many Books and other Media. For example, The Great Animal Orchestra and Voices of the Wild: Animal Songs, Human Din, and the Call to Save Natural Soundscapesare two popular books.

In a podcast interview with Karen Bakker, she discusses the fields of bioacoustics and ecoacoustics and the amazing discoveries within them. She also discusses her book, The Sounds of Life: How Digital Technology Is Bringing Us Closer to the Worlds of Animals and Plants.

Express a little love this month and listen!

– Elizabeth Pass, Cohort VI, for the February 2023 edition of Headwaters Highlights