97 Through the trees, distant weir (source of natural white noise – 3D with ear/headphones)

Full Episode description

Still air. Quiet parkland. It’s 8am, before the people come. Empty paths. Untrodden grass. Mist lifting. On the face of it, nothing is happening. But nothing needs to happen. This is a bright autumnal Sunday morning in late September. 

To the listener, the scene is panoramic, and one enveloped in another kind of mist. Consistent. Never lifting, never changing. From night to day, from month to month, from year to year, a mist made of sound. A flow of pure and natural white noise, infinitely spatial, present throughout every shadowed space beneath the trees. The weir. Its soft surrounding balm.

Lulle Brook is a tributary of the Thames at Cookham, just off the Thames Path National Trail. We heard it from afar, when we first came, long before we knew what it was. A noise on the horizon. A noise with a soft, gravitational pull. In the solitude of the empty parkland, with nobody about, the flowing water instils peace into the air. Widens the sense of space. Throws a canvas on which the birds can paint on their sparse, autumnal calls. Wrens, robins, screeching green parrots, tchacking jackdaws, finches, some distant high passing geese.