210 Watery dell amidst trees at night (sleep safe)

Radio Lento podcast

Everything sounds different in the night. Close things sound sharper. More precise. That which is farther away, sounds larger, though it is still farther away. The sound image of the night, is curiously paradoxical. And yet in an evolutionary way, it is the night context where our hearing may have fundamentally developed to fulfill its primary role.

Here we're back for a second time, amidst the upland trees that surround this hidden dell, to take in this captured quiet from the night. To really listen to the sense of atmosphere that exists when nobody is about. The rilling water, however subtle and unnoticeable during the day, fills the scene. Amplified by the heightened reflectivity of the leaves above. It's about two o'clock in the morning. Almost all the sheep on the surrounding pastures are silent. Floating, like tiny clouds, just above the pitch dark ground.

From time to time, the sky opens up with the sound of a passing plane. Nocturnal flights that for us make this place edgeland. The effect is to light up the full width of the landscape. Reveal, temporarily the vastness of the land. Its plunging contours. Its luscious fields. Its gritstone walls. Ancient barns. Sleeping farmhouses. All at rest, under an empty, windless sky.

For a daytime listen from this place, go to episode 207.