Pandemic Diaries

My Cabin’s Ears

How social distancing brought me closer to my wild neighbors

Me, my cabin, and its Western “ear” mounted by the upper left window

I am a household of one in an 800 square-foot (74 square meter) cabin in Alaska at the edge of one of the world’s largest protected wilderness areas. I live alone in a town of about 500, but I have good friends with whom I regularly met in person to share meals, play music and games, work, plot revolutions, and attend community celebrations. Living in a small town does not mean fewer friends, just fewer strangers. I had a rich social life.

Things that we used to do: community potlucks and social gatherings

Now, to prevent the spread of COVID-19, I do some of that socializing through my computer, some at a safe distance outside, and some of it not at all. This pandemic has distanced me from my people 😔.

I love living with the wildlife. Moose, wolves, and bears share with me the territory that humans consider “my property.” While the pandemic has distanced me from other people, it has made me closer to my wild neighbors. Time and attention I devoted to the former is now available for solitary introspection, for reading, movies, and listening to music. I have also been able to work on projects long languishing on my eternal to-do list. One of those has connected me to the wildlife by bringing the outside into my cabin.

Wild neighbor comes calling

In 2010, after living for seventeen years without running water, I remodeled my cabin so that I could have a shower and laundry. Fellow homeowners will recognize the ensuing “scope creep:” to have running water, I had to have a heat source besides my wood stove, to keep the house from freezing. Hating the idea of burning fossil fuel, and with my community now mostly on hydro-power, I decided to install a heat pump. To keep the operating cost within reason (electricity billing at $0.52/KWh), I invested in new windows, a layer of foam insulation on my exterior walls, and a new insulated roof atop the old one. When all this was done, from inside my energy-efficient home I could no longer hear rain on the roof, wolves howling, or sandhill cranes cackling as they migrated overhead. Ever since then, I wanted to bring the outside sounds in, and this summer I finally got around to doing it.

I installed a pair of microphones on opposite exterior walls of my house and ran cables inside to my professional audio interface. I routed the sound to speakers mounted inside the same walls. Now I can hear what’s going on outside. I can also record the audio on my computer to share with others.

The results are much as I hoped. In the first week of operation I looked out my window to see what was rustling the dry leaves in my yard, in time to see a pair of wolves trotting through! Another time I heard a solitary crane, well after the main migration was over. One night I heard coyotes wailing. I would have missed these encounters in my soundproofed house had it not been for the pandemic.

Such encounters are infrequent, but my rich soundscape is continuous: a breeze rustling cottonwood leaves, the patter of raindrops, but especially the birds. Among them are robins, juncos, chickadees, varied thrushes, ruby-crowned kinglets, Canada geese, winnowing snipes, the calls and knocking (sometimes on my house) of red-breasted sapsuckers, and my favorite, the hermit thrushes. There are others that I am still learning. I can hardly wait for this fall’s sandhill crane migration.

What’s remarkable about my soundscape compared to most people’s is not the abundance or diversity of bird song; many or most places have more than I. What is remarkable about my home is how few human sounds are audible. Human brains are remarkable for their ability to tune out background noises to focus on what is meaningful at the time, for example picking out one conversation in a crowded restaurant. But as I learned from bioacoustician Bernie Krause, microphones like my cabin’s ears are indiscriminate; they pick up every sound, whether or not we notice or want to hear it. Even in Alaska’s Icy Strait, this made it difficult for Krause to record natural sounds; there was almost always a motor vessel audible once we stopped ignoring it. But at my house, human sounds are usually absent. Jets pass over twice daily, small planes more frequently. Sometimes a loud vehicle is audible from town, or a neighbor drives by, or operates a chainsaw. But more often than not, the only sounds are from the wind, the rain, and my wild neighbors, and that is what makes my soundscape remarkable, and why I am so glad to have completed this long-delayed project and to share the results.

Results

It’s not quite like being here. In fact, the 24-foot distance between microphones means that if you listen to these recordings through headphones, it sounds a bit like it might if your head were the size of my cabin. But when you’re ready for a relaxing break, consider putting in your ear buds, settling in a quiet location, starting the playback, and closing your eyes for a little trip to rural Alaska.

This June dusk (23:36) starts with a raucous flyover of Canada geese. When that subsides, you can hear the ethereal fluting of hermit thrushes — called by some “the finest sound in nature” — and the dominant chirping of ruby-crowned kinglets. A few rain drops fall from my roof, hummingbirds visit my feeder, geese honk again at a distance, and a bumblebee flies by as dusk fades into the dim twilight that passes for night this close to summer solstice.

A typical early June dawn (1:39:14) begins very quietly at 2:21 am on June 9, 2020. Winnowing snipes are barely audible. But sunrise comes at 4 am this time of year at latitude 58 degrees North, and the first lightening of the sky comes much earlier. The first robins of the day can be heard about 5 minutes into the sequence, followed by varied thrushes, hermit thrushes, and others gradually joining the awakening chorus. Within 20 minutes, there is quite the cacophony, occasionally including a distant neighbor’s rooster. Canada geese weigh in sporadically. Juncos chime in about 20 minutes later. A hummingbird visits my feeder. It goes on like this, with the snipes gradually fading out, until the sequence ends at sunrise. Careful listeners will discern a few human-related noises, but generally it’s a typically quiet morning at my cabin.

How I did it

Too many people live where a soundproof dwelling is a blessing. But for those who are curious or want to bring their soundscape inside, here is what I did. This is not the simplest possible configuration because I integrated the outdoor sounds into my home audio system. And because I’m an electronics and audio enthusiast. And because I hardly ever do anything the simple way. No wonder it took a pandemic to get this done 🙄.

• Outdoor microphones and windscreens. The transducers that convert sound waves into analog electrical signals (microphones) and vice versa (speakers) are the most critical components of any sound system. After considerable searching online, during which I found that outdoor microphones are mostly low fidelity for surveillance purposes, I chose outdoor weatherproof professional microphones made by ETS in Albuquerque, and added their optional windscreen, for about $125 each plus shipping. I am very pleased with the sensitivity and low noise of these microphones, especially important in a quiet place like mine. Their weather-resistant model is about half the cost, but I live in a rain forest.

ETS PM1-WPW outdoor microphone, with and without optional windscreen. It should be mounted on a standard single-gang weatherproof outlet box or extension box to allow room for the wires and splice, but this direct surface mount worked for me.

• Audio gear: microphone pre-amp, mixer, equalizer, optional audio interface. All these and more are features of my MOTU Ultralite AVB, for about $700. My outdoor microphones require 24–48V power supplied by a pre-amp. The mixer function is not needed in a system dedicated to outdoor sounds, but allows me to route each microphone to the appropriate speaker(s) and also play music or movies through my speakers at the same time from my computer or phone. The equalizer lets me compensate for my microphones, room, and speakers to make the sound inside more like what I hear outside, and filter out inaudible but potentially equipment-damaging low frequencies caused by air movement; I found I had to attenuate certain frequencies (about 2,900 Hz) that were making the sound unnaturally “bright.” The Ultralite AVB also includes a compressor, so that very loud noises like a woodpecker hammering next to my microphone do not damage my amp, speakers, or ears. The audio interface — a USB connection — allows me to record sound on my computer and play audio from it through my sound system.

The MOTU Ultralite AVB is not the simplest or cheapest way to get outdoor sounds in, but in a single compact unit it does all the audio processing I could possibly need.

• Cables and connectors: A microphone’s maker will specify what cables to use. For the ETS, a 22 gauge, stranded, two conductor, shielded cable can be run up to 500 feet to the pre-amp. Some assembly is required!

My approach required soldering to splice cable and attach connectors.

• Amps and speakers: increase the electrical signal and convert it to sound. You will want an indoor speaker for each outdoor microphone, probably placed across the wall from the corresponding outdoor microphones to simulate the directional sense. Generally, plugging a speaker directly into the microphone pre-amp will produce sounds quieter than the outdoors, so you will need either an amplifier or powered speakers. You may want more than one speaker for each microphone, in case you want the same sound in rooms isolated from each other; my West microphone goes to two speakers, one downstairs and one upstairs in the sleeping loft, while the East microphone goes to a speaker that can be heard throughout the house.
• Computer, phone, or tablet: for controlling the audio gear

I can manage the MOTU Ultralite’s mixing and routing functions from any web browser over USB, Ethernet, or WiFi.

• Computer: optional, for recording digital audio

I used MOTU Performer Lite digital audio workstation software to record audio from my outdoor microphones. Performer Lite is a free download for owners of MOTU Ultralite AVB hardware.

A simpler way?

Early in life, I worked as a burglar alarm repairman in New Mexico. One of our clients was a woman living in downtown Santa Fe whose house was hard-wired with an intercom system. One of the intercom stations was located outside her front door. She left that station’s push-to-talk button latched in the “talk” position so that the sounds from her entry were piped continually throughout her house. That memory stuck with me and probably inspired the ears for my cabin. While the sound quality was not great, it would be easy and inexpensive to install a modern wireless intercom system.

1980s hardwired intercom (Angela2109 / Public domain) and modern wireless intercom (https://www.wulooofficial.com/)

There exist many wireless surveillance systems, often including video, that again would provide a simpler and cheaper way to get the outside in, some of which allow recording, again at the expense of high fidelity.

There are many other ways to bring in sounds from the outdoors. Perhaps someone will share a useful idea in the comments to this article. Something involving wireless microphones, perhaps?

Just open a window! This will work well for many people. It even works for folks in Alaska who like sleeping in a cold bedroom. I almost never do this because either

• it’s almost always too cold outside, my entire house is one big room that would be chilled, and I’m too cheap to heat the outside, or
• during the brief warmest days, the tiniest biting gnats get through my screens (I should put a finer mesh on my screens — maybe I’ll get to that next pandemic).

My way lets me listen year-round without wasting heat, and I can record the sounds, which are fun to share. Did I mention that I almost never do things the easy way?

Gratitude and inspiration

• Bernie Krause of Wild Sanctuary, for opening my ears to natural sounds, and the human sounds that obscure them, when he joined me on a series of Spirit Walker Expeditions wilderness kayak adventures focused on natural sounds
• Neighbor Hank Lentfer and the late Richard Nelson, for their awesome soundscape collections and nature education
• Neighbor Justin Smith of Rusty Recordings for his fine ear and technical expertise. My recordings are better thanks to his sage advice, but still the work of an amateur, not a reflection of his abilities and standards.
• ETS and MOTU for professional high-fidelity audio gear
• My quiet human neighbors, for not drowning out my wild neighbors
• My wild neighbors, for keeping me grounded, connected, and inspired