It was one of those perfect end-of-summer days.  There are hardly words to describe these days of course, which is why I took to recording and photography.  Wilderness State Park is a place that embodies everything I love about a natural setting.  Its isolated beauty is untouched by man.  You feel as if on the edge of the world, gazing into the deep blue of Lake Michigan.  You feel the immensity of your surroundings and your comparative smallness, your humbling irrelevance to it all.  This is a place I go to disappear, to experience an immersion with the landscape.  To me, this is the enlightened state, to be sitting and listening only.  

And this day was special for me, as I was leaving Michigan the following day for months.  I went here to have a special goodbye, quiet and alone.  Prior to coming, I had been seeking the situation of recording migratory geese.  I simply wanted to be in the right place at the right time.  And so, magically, I arrived at a small pond just inside the point, adjacent to (not coincidentally) Goose Bay, and there happened to be quite the gaggle resting peacefully at the shallow end of the water.  But where was my windscreen?  

In a moment of panic, I retraced my steps but to no avail.  It was gone with the wind.  Nonetheless, a relative calm prevailed in the atmosphere, and so I returned to the pond careful not to miss my golden opportunity with the geese.  And so I sat.  And waited.  It was getting dark and I had at least a four mile hike back to my car and yet, stubbornly, I had firmly decided that I was not going to depart until these geese did.  It was not an altogether silent wait: there were the sporadic, pleasing sounds of the endangered piping plover and squeaking seagulls.  Three hours later, the magic moment took place.  Slowly, I began to hear the cross-chatter of the geese; my ears attuned like a cat’s.  I watched in awe, as if a miracle were taking place.  It truly felt like a gift to witness this most graceful lift-off.  

In retrospect, I’m glad I lost the windscreen.  It’s comforting to know that there is no filter between that pond and my microphones, between the recording and you, the listener.  The subtle sound of the soft shore winds help contextualize the recording and give the listener a sense of vulnerability.  After all, in wilderness, we are primarily predator, and from us do all animals flee, including even this skein of geese.

From Gaggle to Skein of Geese, Wilderness State Park

experimental • field recording • narrative sound collage 

"Wolf Songs Folk Songs" vinyl available now.  Here is a review from Lost in a Sea of Sound:

"The connective fibers of the physical and spiritual glide effortlessly on this sonic journey.  Wolf Songs Folk Songs can be a cool canopy to rest under or a sun drenched warm hilltop field, but this requires an investment from each listener.  The compositions tremendous diversity and complex patterns is like a heavy shower of rain. Listening under covered shelter a few times eventually provides the soundness to feel comfortable getting soaked.

Corwin Trails is the yoke pulling music heritage and innovation. Ten tracks, constellations in the night sky. Outlines in sound resting in current temporal sonic state. Beauty finding place in what remains unreachable, Corwin Trails rhythmic composites are like undiscovered elements within the planet's crust. Creating another aspect of these harmonies are field recordings from around the world and actual sounds from the forests of Corwin Trails home in Michigan. After many listens, one comparison that came to mind a few times is the album Lost and Safe by The Books."

From Gaggle to Skein of Geese, Wilderness State Park

corwin trails