There was once a beautiful, lush land called Lincoln Meadow, which is in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
This is what it sounded like in 1988, when sound recordist Bernie Krause turned on his gear to capture the environment:
The orange squiggly lines you see are a spectrograph, which is a visual representation of the richness and diversity of the audio from the environment.
It's very depressing to see/hear the differences between the resonant and vibrant before human transformation and after. It's like the place is sick and the voice expresses sadness. I never know quite how to handle the impact. I just wish I was more alcohol or drug tolerant.
One year later, the difference in the ecosystem is shocking.
It's like one sad little bird singing his sad little song by a murky drainage pipe instead of this beautiful woodland forest of magical creatures.
Bye planet Earth, thanks for the memories.
