I feel fortunate to have been able to record over an hour of unbroken natural sound in the Olympic National Forest at the Snider-Jackson trail head. Starting during Civil Twilight, sun rises in this recording around the 30 minute mark, although the Thrushes were awake and active long before then. Robins, Varied Thrushes, Flycatchers, woodpeckers, squirrels, Pacific Wrens, and more fill these moss-covered woods to the background wash of the Calawah River.
Sunrise was at 5:42 this morning, with the first almost-audible human-related sounds of very distant vehicles starting nearly an hour after that.
It's difficult to comprehend the sound of the wilderness we are losing. Even here, deep in the mountainous, moss-covered trees of the Olympic National Forest on the border of the Olympic National Park, it's only by creeping out in the early hours of the morning that we can hear long stretches of natural sound unbroken by human-created noises. With the ever-encroaching settlements of humankind, how much longer will it be before even that is lost?
