Delirious Ramblings

The Wind Transformed

The Wind Transformed, Flagstaff, AZ, March 2012

They put up a wind turbine next to one of the buildings on campus a while back. One windy day I was walking through the area and noticed that the turbine was making the most fascinating and eerie wailing sound as the blades spun up and down in response to the gusts. I'm sure the kids driving past on campus thought I was some kind of a nut standing there with my ear pressed against the turbine's metal support tower. I decided that the next time the wind was blowing hard on a weekend morning I'd go back and try to record some audio of that wailing sound.

About three days later another strong storm passed to the north and I returned to the wind turbine with my digital audio recorder. I figured campus security would confront me about the strange little electronic device I was attaching to their fancy turbine, but no one said a thing (which was kind of disappointing).

Anyway, here are three minutes of what the wind sounds like when it's filtered and transformed through a fifty foot metal tower and a spinning electrical generator (3:20, 3.3MB mp3): 

The Wind Transformed - Wind Turbine #1

And here is what it sounded like when the turbine abruptly cut off for some reason about ten minutes later. The wind had been really blowing so I suspect that some safety mechanism kicked in to prevent the generator from spinning its little innards out. Maybe it overheated or something. (1 minute, 1MB mp3) 

The Wind Transformed - Wind Turbine #2

 Kinda freaky sounding, huh? 

One time last May I went up on Mt. Elden during a hellish windstorm and pressed my ear against one of the burned snags left over from the 1977 Radio Fire. The old tree extended up into the screaming jetstream overhead like a giant sonar array and for a second I thought I could hear the sound of waves breaking on some lonely beach all the way down in the Gulf of California. I rushed home and started drafting up a blog post about the experience but the words just wouldn't come together. Maybe one of these days I'll dust off that post and try again...

140 dBs of Pure Zen

Trenching Machine, Flagstaff, Arizona, March 2012

They finally started construction on the office building behind where I work and for the past week we've all been listening to the sound of heavy machinery breaking the bones of the coconino sandstone underlying this part of Arizona. Friday I brought my audio recorder to work and got a couple minutes of the sound emanating from an industrial strength trencher operating about twenty feet from my office window. I presume that they're digging a trench for utility lines or something. I had to drop the mic level to 30% of what I normally use for recording birds and such to prevent clipping - it was that loud.

Here's an MP3 for you masochists out there: 

140 dBs of Zen

 It's pretty obnoxious stuff, although if you turn the volume on your MP3 player down to zero it's not too bad. It has a kind of twisted Zen quality to it.

I thought it was interesting how a couple days into this nightmare my mind kind of tuned out the noise and I was able to concentrate on my code again. The others working in my wing of the building seemed to adapt more quickly than I did, but I think I'm more vulnerable to this because I get regular doses of wilderness silence on my weekend hikes. Actually, I think for most people these days it's probably harder to adapt to stillness and silence than to noise, but that's just a theory.

I'm sure the stress was affecting me even though I didn't notice it after a while because my lunch hour walks down into the relative quiet of the Flagstaff urban trail seemed so much more relaxing than usual. It's fascinating how you can adapt to this sort of stress and get on with life. It makes me wonder what other kinds of unhealthy nonsense we've unconsciously adapted to that is making us crazy.

The Voice of Jack Smith Spring

The Voice of Jack Smith Spring, Coconino National Forest, February 2012

When I was snowshoeing around the Inner Basin the other day I stopped near Jack Smith spring to record some audio of a small stream gurgling and splashing its way through rocks and ice. I placed my recorder down in the channel on a small telescoping tripod mere inches above the water. Between jet intrusions the recorder's stereo microphones captured the stream's polyphonic voice as it bubbled and babbled its age-old story of slumbering mountain peaks and deep winter snows. I stood nearby trying not to shiver in the lingering cold, thinking about the water slowly percolating its way through porous lava rock and forest detritus, imagining the subterranean wonders it might've seen on its journey from the snowfields above.

Below is (hopefully) an embedded MP3 player so you can hear a four minute segment of the flowing water. A downloadable 6MB MP3 file is also available if you want to listen to it on your ipod or other audio device. If you listen closely through headphones you can hear at least two layers of gurgling and splashing cycling back and forth, the harmonics merging and stacking atop one another in complex ways. It's kind of relaxing and helps one to understand how dynamic and active free flowing water can be.

The Voice of Jack Smith Spring

If you've ever hiked the Inner Basin of the San Francisco Peaks you probably know the place I was standing: it's where the Inner Basin trail meets the waterline road, a mile or so above Lockett Meadow. Tucked into the trees there are several green sheds and an outhouse toilet that used to be full of shy black widow spiders that would watch nervously from the gloomy corners while you did your business. The buildings are presumably associated with the extensive water wells and pipelines that slurp water out of the Inner Basin watershed and funnel it 17 miles down the mountain into the Flagstaff water system. I won't go into what happens to it after that, although it would appear that some of it may soon be finding its way back up the mountain - albeit a little worse for wear - and sprayed out as artificial snow at the Arizona Snowbowl.

 

Icy Stream, Coconino National Forest, February 2012

According to my topo map Jack Smith spring is actually a few hundred yards up the drainage from where I recorded the audio. The gurgling and splashing water you hear in the MP3 issues from a large diameter pipe that comes down the hill out of the woods and is likely carrying water from the spring to the cluster of buildings. Although it's possible that it's just some other unnamed spring that the Forest Service wanted left free-flowing for hikers and wildlife to use. I'll go out on a limb and say the water comes from Jack Smith spring, but it doesn't really matter: most of the springs up there are imprisoned inside concrete spring boxes and metal pipe and everything mingles together these days.

Jack Smith spring has a somewhat interesting history, which I'll probably post about in a few days.