Wednesday, October 21, 2009 9:00 PM/ Thursday, October 22, 2009 10:00 AM- Syndicate Road Woods
To hear my recording, click here
It is amazing how much we take sound for granted. Just walking out to my site at the Syndicate Road woods I noticed so many more sounds than I had before; the sound the leaves make when they fall to rest on the ground, the hum of the electrical and heating units of nearby buildings, and the rustle of squirrels scampering up tree trunks. I first visited my site on Wednesday night, hoping to see and hear some things that were not present in the daytime. The moon was a thin waxing crescent and gave no light to my journey. I did not see many stars, but I figured the night was cloudy because it was warm. On the road, the sound of crickets filled the air in a slow, melodic chorus, but once I stepped under the canopy of the woods I could barely hear their chirping. The woods were quiet and eerie at this time of night. There were a few gray squirrels scurrying about, but I did not see or hear any deer, frogs or other nocturnal animals. The stillness was interrupted at multiple points by not only cars whizzing past on Syndicate Road, but by trains as well. It turns out that there is an active railroad quite close to campus that runs westward just north of the Hoosac River and then north, parallel with Route 7. From what I heard, it sounded like the train was used mostly for freight and the sound of its wheels on the tracks lasted for at least five minutes. Wishing to get a recording of this chorus of stream, cars and trains, I turned on the recording device, only to find it was out of battery. I decided to come back the next day to make a recording.
On Thursday morning, after charging the recorder, I headed out to the Syndicate Road woods at about 10:00 A.M. It was an oddly warm day for late October, about 55 degrees, and there were few clouds in the sky. At this time there were more human noises to take into account; the scuffle of feet through fallen leaves as people headed out for class, the chatter of the dining staff during their break, and the thud of the rubber ball against the floor of the paddle ball court. The difference between my visit this morning and my visit the night before was the presence of boisterous birds. Their chirping noises were even more easily heard when I walked further away from campus and closer to the woods. I could identify the calls of crows, finches, and chickadees, but there were many more I could only analyze and record. A few squirrels greeted me as I entered the woods and I even saw and heard a few chipmunks scamper about. I heard a continuous, loud rustling of leaves, and attributed them the small creatures, but after the noise continued I turned to look and realized that it was the result of a deer. I only saw one, which appeared to be a doe, and as soon as I tried to get a closer look she ran off towards the Poker Flats fields. This has been my second sighting of deer at the site during broad daylight, and I wonder why the deer are active at this time.
Another sound that I was able to record was the sound of the stream. Although the stream seemed to trickle very loudly out of the culvert, the water was mostly stagnant so the sound must have been amplified by the shape and material of the cement culvert. Otherwise, the Syndicate Road woods were mostly silent, but it makes me wonder what the definition of silent is. In fact, if you listen closely, the woods are far from silent; the leaves crackle in the wind, small crickets chirp, branches snap. We humans have formulated a new definition of “silence”. To us, if the sounds that surround us do not reach the volume of a car or a motorcycle, we consider our atmosphere to be quiet, maybe even silent. We take for granted the whistling of the wind and the sound of two blades of grass brushing together. At my site today however, I realized that if you spend a while in the woods even the chirping of a song sparrow can seem quite loud.