104 While away in winter woodland (a clear mind special)

Full Episode description

December is a very quiet month for natural sound out here in the walkable wilderness. Wind moaning in the telegraph wires, and rain spattering into flooded puddles. And when you reach them, the woods, down long lanes and a muddy footpath, the song birds haven’t yet begun to sing. But stop, qwell the noise of your boots, and listen. Wait…. Let all sense of motion go. A few moments are all that’s needed.

It comes, more as a feeling than a sound, though it comes from sound. An awareness, of the surrounding wood. The wood as one, huge, still presence. One, huge, reverberant reservoir, of hushing quiet, that has you immersed within it. The wind rises, and falls. The calls of distant birds echo through the voids. Occasionally, the creaking sound, as solid tree trunks bend with the pressure of moving air.

The hushing is made as the banks of cold winter wind brush over the high tree tops, and through into the countless boughs and bare branches. Each one, each bough and branch, each one in their thousands, in their millions, generates small trails of invisible, turbulent air. White noise streamers, that shower down, to land on our ears. We hear it, as waves of infinitely spatial hushing. The sound of the whole forest, as it brushes against the wind.

This was recorded in Comb’s Wood, Hertfordshire in December.