#16 Riddle Creek Trail, Yellowstone National Park | October 12th, 2018

Field Recordings NYC

Yellowstone completely blew my mind. I now, finally understand why folks talk about it so much. I’ve been to national parks before. Badlands being the most recent that I visited in the beginning of this same road trip, but Yellowstone is like 20 national parks in one. I had no idea the vast amount of space and diversity that I was to witness every day we spent there. You can literally spend the entire day driving through the park, finding new sights and landscapes that are completely different to what you witnessed the day or even hours before. Regrettably, this is the only soundscape I captured from my trip to Yellowstone, being such a multifarious subject, but it also happens to be one of my favorites I’ve captured thus far. Never before have I captured the sound of ‘space’ like this. You can really hear the distance that surrounds you there. The trail we hiked is riddled with Lodgepole Pine trees that tower over you. I love these trees because you can hear them creak as they gently sway in the wind. Shortly after I started recording, what looked like a military-grade plane flew overhead, briefly shaking the near-silence as a reminder that even the most distant and heavily protected areas of our planet are still very much inhabited by humans in some shape or form. Yellowstone was on the tail-end of our mid-west travels this past October, starting in Des Moines, Iowa to Badlands, South Dakota and ending in Yellowstone National Park, with pitstops at Mount Rushmore and Sheridan, Wyoming to enjoy the local pub culture. 3:31pm - 4:41pm 41°F and falling (Low of 15°F / High of 41°F) Clear Skies Wind: 5.8mph Variable Humidity: 62%