The all encompassing sound of the river

Sitting by a shallow, pebbly river in Daisy Nook Country Park on Saturday I realised that I often find the most natural sounds the hardest to describe. Maybe because nature came before language, or maybe because natural sounds can be so all encompassing, panoramic and three dimensional that it is hard to define where one sound ends and the next begins.

From high up the river just sounded beautiful; splashing, trickling and shushing, but in trying to establish the more minute sounds that were creating these more immediate ones I found it increasingly difficult to dissect.

After listening for a while I managed to hear four quite distinct spaces; far off to the right, a couple of metres to my left, the centre, and with a more subtle listening zone to my near right.

To the far right was sharp, breezy, light and hissing like fire with high pitch splatter darting down, sound brazenly batting from the surface. Resistance and absorption. In front of me there were gulps, sucking and releasing. Squelching, soft, translucent, round rather than circular patterns, babbling, chattering and running.

To my near right there were low frequency gurgles, not broken up but synthesised with the crackle and fizz of minute eruptions and bursts, breaks, holes. Mid range dots colliding and multiplying in pools. To the left the sounds rushed away, fast, urgent, fluid and calming, never ending but mutating, glooping and rolling on.

I was amazed by the nuances and how these sounds were all interrelated but also quite separate and individual in their own right, so natural, so much going on, polyrhythmic patterns forming and layering, rushing away and drawing back.

There was so much to hear that it was impossible to comprehend it all, at least to put into words anyway, but for me this is what is so magical about truly natural sounds. My contemplation was disturbed soon anyway, as a grown man showing off in front of his son fell dramatically into the river just a few feet away from me. I could go into the sonic details of this... but I was laughing too much to notice.