Comet Falls is a waterfall on the south side of Tahoma (Mount Rainier) offering a nice four mile roundtrip hike, perfect for a day when the mountain is socked-in. It’s one of the most impressive falls that I’ve hiked to, dropping about 320 feet (98 m) in a vertical plunge from a hanging valley into a pretty subalpine canyon.

I’ve mentioned this before, but I think waterfalls rarely translate the way you’d hope they would in sound. They are so dazzling to look at, and it’s exhilarating to feel the rush of wind and spray near the bottom, but not all that interesting to listen to, it turns out. They kind of sound like FM radio static: Shhh. Most of them anyway. And alas, Comet Falls is no remarkable exception on that score.

And so it goes most any waterfall may be more sonogenic when captured in a soundwalk format, as this gives the listener a dimensionality that isn’t conveyed in a fixed point recording.

The hike to Comet Falls follows Van Trump Creek through the canopy and along hillside openings with talus slopes, where you might find Pika (sounding a high-pitched peep). The wildlife was particularly subdued by the grey skies on this day, so the it barely registers. Varied Thrush, Dark-eyed Junco, and Pacific Wren can be heard to the attentive listener in headphones, but this is mostly a water soundwalk. Our journey takes us to the waterfall viewpoint and follows a return path for a couple minutes. Another thing about waterfall sound: unless you get really close (like next to water splattering on rocks) it’s difficult to discern when you are “there”. It’s a surprisingly anticlimactic experience if you remove sight from the equation.

This is another composition where I’m keeping to the low octaves of a particularly sonorous electric piano. (It would not sound good on a phone speaker.) I do this to preserve listening space for all the water and wildlife frequencies, and also because I just like the dark (as opposed to bright) vibe for this one.

I’ve always thought that a waterfall walk would make an interesting canvas for a super-minimal synth score for droning synth pads and very slowly morphing pitches and timbres, mirroring the manifold sound of the waterfall’s creek outlet. This is not that, exactly. Though it occasionally goes there, it’s more melodic and approachable. Written in a D minor, the composition evokes the cloudy sky and the slow climb through the valley. The harmonics are ponderous, peppered as they are with sustained second chords, and textured with organ washes and soft, flutey synth pads.

Thanks for reading and listening. Comet Falls Soundwalk is available on all music streaming services tomorrow April 10th, 2026.

On many a post I’ve told a story about how I found a spot somewhere, that despite being within an urban area, sounded as if it might be in the deep woods. As a practical matter this tends to rely on geologic and erosive forces creating canyons and acoustic gullies of one sort or the other. While I find this sort of thing interesting, I’m mindful it doesn’t spark other peoples imaginations quite like my own. So, it is with some reluctance that I advance this line of thinking yet again, but with a twist. Bear with me.

One thing that is not abundant along the Netherlands coastline are hills, canyons, and gullies. It’s for this reason, the bicycle is embraced as a primary form of transportation for many (maybe most) people. Amsterdam is alive with cyclists in part because the flat landscape is so conducive to cycling. And, because more trips are made via bicycle, the inner city does not pulse with automobile traffic sounds in the same way that a hilly, post-industrial city might. San Fransisco, for example. Or wherever.

All of this is background to presenting to you today the first of many soundscape and soundwalk recordings that embrace anthropogenic sounds (alongside the wildlife sounds) in these urban environments. Consider this an easing-in.

We are getting our feet wet, so to speak, in the Oud Zuid district of Amsterdam, alongside the Noorder Amstelkanaal, as the city wakes up, on a summer day. Sirens mix with songbirds in a strangely musical way. Overall, though, it’s astonishingly quiet. The buildings and canals form an engineered canyon, of sorts.

It’s well known that travel can spark a person to reconsider assumptions; to make new associations. I guess that can be said of my travels in Europe last summer, leading me to re-evaluate my approach to making environmental recordings. In some ways the cities sounded familiar to the one I call home. In others, quite distinct. On the whole, I was able to find new appreciation for these city sounds in general, hearing them with fresh ears.

There is a futility in attempting to record soundscapes free of any anthropogenic sound. Our noisy machines routinely puncture the soundscapes of even the most remote locations. It comes as a relief to me, therefore, to chart a new course that embraces the totality of sound, with less rigidity.

Amsterdam Dawn is available under the artist name Listening Spot on all streaming platforms tomorrow, Friday, April 3rd, 2026. Thank you for meeting me here; for listening and reading. There’s a lot to read and hear in this modern world. I’m grateful for your interest in my little corner.

Traveling around, I’ve become aware of how Pacific Northwest rain is different from rain patterns in other regions of the US. Take Texas, for example. Texas rain pours. Houses don’t have gutters there, presumably because they can’t engineer them large enough to accommodate the deluges reliably. Storm water infrastructure is three times the size of what I see around here. In contrast, Oregon rain is persistent. Drizzle can last for days. It’s kind of like the tortoise and the hare, I guess.

This soundscape was recorded in Forest Park last year around this time, on a dead-end, unnamed trail that doesn’t see a lot of use, but nonetheless features a sturdy old bench. It is a pretty sweet listening spot for this reason, and this particular time slice offers a pretty accurate sound portrait of our soft rain. Our soft power.

Did you know that the Pacific Temperate Rainforest—a bioregion extending from the northern California redwoods to the coastal forests along the gulf of Alaska—can pack more carbon per acre than a tropical rainforest like the Amazon?

The Pacific Temperate Rainforest is the second-most dense biomass repository and carbon sink in the world (bested only by the Eucalyptus regnans forests of Victoria and Tasmania, Australia) and it’s what gives our Pacific Northwest rain its unique character (and sound). The Pacific Temperate Rainforest operates like a giant lung. Just as a lung draws in air, extracts what's vital, and releases what the body needs to stay alive, the Pacific Temperate Rainforest breathes on a continental scale, pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and locking it away in massive old-growth trunks, roots, and the deep organic soils beneath them, while exhaling oxygen and releasing moisture that cycles inland as rain. The forest doesn't just store carbon passively; it actively pumps water vapor into the atmosphere, seeding clouds and feeding rivers that sustain salmon, which in turn fertilize the forest floor when they die. It’s a closed loop where nothing is wasted.

Spring Shower is available under the artist name Listening Spot on all streaming platforms Friday, March 20th, 2026. I’ve made it available here in its entirety with the idea it might be useful.

Thanks for reading and listening!