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Sam Vandiver - From Gaggle to Skein of Geese

from Earth (Listening) by Various Artists

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From Gaggle to Skein of Geese
Corwin Trails
Wilderness State Park, Michigan, USA

September 15, 2016
It was one of those perfect end-of-summer days. There are hardly words to describe these days of course, which is why I took to recording and photography. Wilderness State Park is a place that embodies everything I love about a natural setting. Its isolated beauty is untouched by man. You feel as if on the edge of the world, gazing into the deep blue of Lake Michigan. You feel the immensity of your surroundings and your comparative smallness, your humbling irrelevance to it all. This is a place I go to disappear, to immerse myself totally into my
surroundings. To me, this is the enlightened state, to be sitting and listening only.
And this day was special for me, as I was leaving Michigan the following day for months. I went here to have a special goodbye, quiet and alone. Prior to coming, I had been seeking the situation of recording migratory geese. I simply wanted to be in the right place at the right time. And so, magically, I arrived at a small pond just inside the point, adjacent to (not coincidentally) Goose Bay, and there happened to be quite the gaggle resting
peacefully at the shallow end of the water. But where was my windscreen?
In a moment of panic, I retraced my steps but to no avail. It was gone with the wind. Nonetheless, a relative calm prevailed in the atmosphere, and so I returned to the pond careful not to miss my golden opportunity with the geese. And so I sat. And waited. It was getting dark and I had at least a four mile hike back to my car and yet, stubbornly, I had firmly decided that I was not going to depart until these geese did. It was not an altogether
silent wait: there were the sporadic, pleasing sounds of the endangered piping plover and squeaking seagulls.Three hours later, the magic moment took place. Slowly, I began to hear the cross-chatter of the geese; my ears attuned like a cat’s. I watched in awe, as if a miracle were taking place. It truly felt like a gift to witness this most graceful lift-off. I wanted to
In retrospect, I’m glad I lost the windscreen. It’s comforting to know that there is no filter between that pond and my microphones, between the recording and you, the listener. The subtle sound of the soft shore winds help contextualize the recording and give the listener a sense of vulnerability. After all, in wilderness, we are primarily predator, and from us do all animals flee, including even this skein of geese.

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from Earth (Listening), released January 7, 2017

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