Natural Perceptions?

Welcome to "The Grounded Mic."

I haven’t done any field recording since freeze-up.

10 November 2025. Elk Island National Park.

I could say this lack of recording is because, here in central Alberta, winter birds make no music. However, field recording in nature is about more than bird song—or at least, so I keep telling myself.

I’ve hit a wall—a wall I run into every year.

I could blame the cold, the snow, the long, icy roads to natural areas, the silence of winter landscapes, or the lack of sound diversity… but just making that list makes me realize these are all just excuses. Because I know what I’m missing.

I miss the Stillness. I miss listening to the faint prattle of snowfall. I miss the ice creaky-cracking; the crunch-muffled footsteps, scything skis, and snowshoe shuffles; the bison’s plodding, ploughing, and huffing; the brittle caws of crows and ravens’ gurgling croaks; the bluejays’ metallic jeers; and the tap-tapping of woodpeckers in search of dormant delights. I’ve recorded none of these this winter. I’ve hit the Winter Wall.

This happens every year. Come December, my heart and body fall into a sort of torpor in which I want to hide away from the world. I want to hunker down, ignore the outside, and explore more inward-looking interests and hobbies. While most winters I eventually shrug it off and at least go cross-country skiing or snowshoeing, this winter the need to escape the world is particularly strong in the shadow of (to put it mildly) Donald Trump, as he blunders around the world creating havoc for the already fragile world order.

One result of this winter cocooning has been a closer look at this Substack, formerly called Natural Perceptions. For the most part, my plans for it remain unchanged; most of what is presented will still be the result of me quietly and unobtrusively sitting in nature while an audio recording runs in the background. (The benefits of this can be found on my About page, so I won’t reiterate them here.)

However, in the process of developing this interest, I have found that completely escaping anthropogenic sounds (called anthropophony or anthrophony in field recording jargon) in my region of the world is almost impossible. Constantly trying to escape or erase them often becomes too time-consuming.

Alongside this realization, I have begun a new project that deliberately includes more man-made sounds and sound manipulation, and I want to share some of these processes and results here (See section, Sound Collecting). The new title, The Grounded Mic, represents my practice of sitting and recording in nature (See the section Through Nature), but it is less restrictive. It allows me to veer off on other tangents—seeing “grounded” in its electrical sense, as “a safe, low-resistance path for excess current to flow away.” (Besides, the title Madly Off in All Directions was already taken.) On the other hand, being “well-grounded” as a character trait is, alas, something I still strive for, and the title will serve as a reminder.

Thanks for staying with me this far. Please comment if you have any questions or thoughts on this change.