The sense of scale is fantastic. There are a couple of passages where
I can feel a very thrilling, low Hz resonance-- particularly at the
beginning and at 2:00 mins, around when the branch falls. If you can
hear this, do you think this could be some standing waves in the
canyon? Every good storm experience must include survival tactics.
Most folks would have lost the material. Thanks for sharing the
experience with us, Dan. Rob D.
At 10:25 PM -0800 1/5/08, Dan Dugan wrote:
>I'm eleven months through my project of recording night and dawn in
>Muir Woods every month. I also wanted to add the sound of a storm in
>the forest to the collection. Last winter, when storms blew in at
>night I had trouble finding the motivation to drive in the storm for
>an hour and then go out in it.
>
>Day before yesterday a big storm was predicted to hit Friday morning.
>That was perfect for me; my ambition burns brighter in the morning.
>
>Getting there proved to be a challenge. The Highway 1 exit from 101
>was closed due to flooding. The route through Mill Valley was mostly
>clear but I was stopped by a tree across the road a couple of miles
>before the park. I went back. Approaching Tam Junction from the north
>I was able to get onto Highway 1 and get over the ridge.
>
>Going down Muir Woods Road I had to stop twice to drag branches off
>the road. I was starting to think that my heroic plan was perhaps a
>bit foolish. There were no other cars on the road and I had a good
>chance of being stranded for a while.
>
>The park (Muir Woods National Monument)
><<http://www.nps.gov/muwo/>http://www.nps.gov/muwo/>
>was closed. I parked in the maintenance yard and rigged up with my
>shoulder mics. I had the bad luck of arriving at the parking lot gate
>just as a park policeman pulled up to make his rounds checking the
>gates, parking lots, visitor center, and cafe. He told me the park
>was closed. I asked him if Mia (the boss) was in her office. He said
>OK, I could go see her, but I should get out as fast as I could
>because it was a very dangerous place.
>
>I had to pick my way through the shattered remains of a grand old oak
>on my way through the parking lot. The boardwalk was carpeted with
>litter and branches. The director's office was locked up. I made a
>five-minute recording before going further, so in case the policeman
>came to check on me I would at least have something. My Sharp
>MD-MS722 recorder stopped responding to its buttons. This was what
>happened to one of the same model when I was recording in the rain on
>my first nature recording expedition, in New Zealand in 2001. I
>unplugged the mics and put the recorder away, hoping it would run to
>the end of the disc and shut itself down. Time for MD recorder No. 2.
>
>I got to Cathedral Grove, my recording spot in tall old growth
>redwoods. I recorded for half an hour. Being in a steep-sided canyon
>there wasn't much wind at ground level. The rain was being processed
>by the redwoods into large drops that made loud impacts after falling
>a hundred feet. Each wind gust was crowned by a spatter of drops. The
>drops were pretty noisy on the brim of my cowboy hat, so I switched
>to a knit cap for another half an hour. That was quieter, but of
>course more drops hit the windscreens on my shoulders. With the
>raging storm I didn't have to worry about body noises. I was hoping
>to catch a tree falling, but the best I could do was a branch
>cracking and falling (hear below).
>
>Despite the storm I heard calls of winter wrens and ravens, two
>ubiquitous resident species.
>
>As I was soaked and cold, I stopped at one hour. Tried to stop,
>actually, because my second Sharp's buttons had frozen up, too. I had
>brought an extra plastic bag to put the recorders in, but by the time
>I started recording I was pretty exhausted from the circuitous drive
>in the storm and picking my way through the debris, and I thought
>holding it close to my chest would be shelter enough. It wasn't. Two
>down.
>
>I let that machine run to the end while I walked back, and when it
>ran out I plugged the mics into my Nagra ARES-M. I stopped in a few
>places to catch the raging of the creek in flood. Back at the
>entrance a tree had fallen across in front of the visitor center
>while I was out. There was high wind at ground level there, and I had
>to turn my gain way down to keep from overloading. I would have
>switched on the high-pass filter, but on the Nagra M it's in a menu.
>Later I remembered that I had made a preset with the filter in, only
>two menu levels down, but again my tired brain failed to connect
>under chaotic conditions.
>
>Back at the lab I put all three recorders in a food dryer for a few
>hours. They recorded their TOCs after many determined presses of the
>stop buttons. A couple of days later they seemed fine.
>
>Sorry this story has gotten so long. I edited together four of the
>best gusts from Cathedral Grove:
>
><<http://www.dandugan.com/downloads/Muir%20Woods%20Storm.mp3>http://www.dandugan.com/downloads/Muir%20Woods%20Storm.mp3>
>
>I tried to upload it to the group cache, but it was too long (2-1/2
>minutes, 192K b/s).
>
>-Dan Dugan
>
>
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