217 Upland woods in winter gales (part 2 – sleep safe)

Full Episode description

In winter gales amongst moorland trees at night. Dark sky. Empty of everything, except for the invisible moving wind.   

A moor slopes steep up to the right. And half a mile of grassland slopes gently away down the valley, to the left. At the bottom, is a reservoir, hidden behind more trees. This grassy spot along a high gritstone wall, near an old iron gate, looks from the lane like any overgrown corner of a Peak District field. But it isn’t. It isn’t just any spot. It is a seat in an amphitheatre of specially arranged wind catching trees. 

Of course nobody actually set out to specially arrange these outcrops of trees like this. So, from this aural vantage point, they’d create such a perfectly balanced and spatially panoramic scene in winter gales. They only catch the wind and turn its energy into deep and richly undulating sound because that’s what trees do. But having left the Lento box in this spot to capture this long passage of time, it feels wonderful to have discovered that this exists.

Here it is. And the performance? An hour of fresh moorland air.