160 Forest ravine

Full Episode description

This precipitous place, high in the Derbyshire hills, flows with birdsong and fresh moorland water. It’s aural presence is made almost entirely of natural things. Non-human, natural phenomena.

The sound-feel when immersed in it, has a depth, a width, and such rich spatial detail, that with headphones on and eyes closed, the sensation of actually being there, in the ravine, can be so strong as to trigger your visual brain to daydream you into it. Daydream you into a place of green, restorative quiet. The ravine is a wilderness. 

Having picked your way through and up into it’s central point, and with your back against the trunk of a sturdy tree, feet wedged against the 45 degree slope on a jutting rock, you feel safe, and hidden. Safe enough to listen, to time passing.

Far below, the barely wide enough to walk on path, criss-crossed with exposed tree roots and used mainly by sheep. Below that, the fresh flowing water of Todd Brook, babbling its way shallowly, filling the air with delicate soft white noise.  Extreme right of scene, the reservoir itself, and beyond that a hillside road. 

Having this piece of time uninterrupted , and from this elevation, you can watch the geese through the trees as they fly up and through the airspace of the ravine, right to left.

Hear the valley’s luscious reverberations. The water timelessly rilling, over the uneven bedrock. The sheep calling, as they graze the steep farmland above.  The blackcaps, the wrens , the robins, and all the singing birds, pouring out their perfect mellifluous songs, into this wilderness forest ravine.