Well it's August already and I've been neglecting my blog for months now. I should have posted 3 months ago when we held our spring '09 expedition on the first weekend of May. I should have written my report on that expedition and posted it much sooner but I didn't. I did start my report and had every intention of finishing it and getting it posted here but we all know how even with "the best of intentions" things don't always go according to plan. Well in any event, as I said I am working on the report from our spring expedition and will get it posted, eventually.
Speaking of expeditions, we just recently returned from another one in the Adirondack Park. So now I have a second report to write for this latest expedition even though I still have yet to post the first one, yikes! I guess I better get busy then.
I’ll give a really brief description of the first few hours of our latest field research trip here. There won’t be very many specific details related here now, though I will post a much more inclusive full expedition report eventually. The reason I’m posting this now instead of waiting to post my full report later on is simple. The NESRA team was lucky enough to get some very interesting audio clips recorded during this expedition and we wanted to get these audio clips out there for everyone to hear as soon as possible. So that’s why I’m not waiting until my report is ready to post these clips because otherwise you would all be waiting quite a while being that I still have to finish the first report I’m still working on.
Okay so here is a brief description of the first few hours of our most recent expedition and of the events that led up to the recording of some very interesting sounds at our base camp location.
The weekend of 7/31/09 – 8/02/09 the NESRA team was on expedition again in one of our favorite research areas in the Adirondack Park of upstate NY. The first afternoon of the first day I was at our chosen base camp location alone for several hours until the next member of our team arrived. The small clearing was choked with high grass and weeds and was much smaller than it had been the last time we had been at this location. I drove my truck back a forth through the clearing trying to flatten as much of center of the clearing as possible to make room for the other vehicles and our tents. After doing this I parked my truck then got my Zoom H2 recorder and some of my other gear ready.
Fellow NESRA researcher Bill was not scheduled to arrive for at least another 60 – 90 minutes so I found myself alone with some time to kill. I decided to do a quick recon of the immediate area around our base camp and also to try some wood knocks since it was so quiet in the forest, except for the sounds of the rain that is, with nobody else there.
I hiked around for about an hour or so just to see what I could see. I figured it was better than just waiting there at camp for Bill to show up. At least this way I had something to do for a while. As I scouted the surrounding area, I had my recorder running the entire time. I narrated everything I was doing as I did it and described everything I was seeing as well to create a complete audio record of my first hour in the forest. I found a small unusual rock pile not far from camp, a game trail that seemed to have seen some recent use and a flattened down spot in the high grass where a large animal (probably a deer) had obviously bedded down. I didn’t find much else of interest on this initial short hike but it’s not really what I found but more what I heard that is important to note.
I kept checking my watch and when it was close to the time that Bill was scheduled to join me I headed back towards the clearing. Near the end of my hike when I was close to our camp location I decided to try some wood knocks just to see if I would get any type of a response. I really wasn’t expecting a response but thought it was worth trying anyway. “Hey, you never know…” as the saying goes, right?
So I did a few wood knocks on a good sized downed limb just off the trail. Then I hiked the short distance back to the base camp and did a few more knocks about 8 minutes later. Well almost exactly 2 minutes after the last wood knocks I did and approx 10 minutes after the first knocks I certainly got a response, and what a response it was!!!
All of a sudden from behind me came these sounds which I heard even over the fairly loud background noise of the falling rain on the hood of my rain gear! What I heard was the sounds of 3 quick “bangs” (which I believe are most likely wood knocks) followed immediately by a single “heavy crash” sound (that I’m not sure about but I’m leaning towards it being a tree falling or possibly being pushed over or a large heavy object being thrown down). I had my recorder on and was able to document these sounds over the background noise of the rainfall. I remained quiet for some time after recording the sounds I had just heard in case there were more. But those would be the only unusual sounds I would hear for the rest of the day.
After waiting around a while I decided I wasn’t going to hear anything more so I got back in my truck to get out of the rain for a while. I was really hungry by this point so I figured it was time for some lunch. I ate my lunch and just when I had finished eating I heard the sound of a vehicle approaching.
Bill drove up in his truck as I got out of my truck to greet him. He had arrived quite a bit later than he had originally planned. Dave was the next member of the NESRA team to show up and he arrived shortly after Bill did that afternoon. Later that evening we were joined by fellow field researcher Chuck.
Once I returned from the expedition, I listened to my audio clips and edited them down a bit. Then I sent the shortened audio files to Bill who uploaded them to the Soundcloud.com website he likes to use to host his recorded audio clips. So follow the links after each brief description over to Soundcloud to listen to these sounds and see what you think of them.
This first clip is the full 2:18 real time clip which I edited down from the original length recording to isolate the last wood knocks I did in base camp followed by the response I received about 2 minutes later. Because this is a real time clip, there is approx 2 minutes of near silence as I’m waiting to hear if there was any reply. There are of course some noises like the sound of the falling rain, a few handling noises of my fingers on the exterior of the recorder and me moving around a bit but that’s it until the response occurs at the end of the clip.
NESRA Expedition 7-31-09 - 8-2-09 1 edit 3 wood knocks and crash real time 2 18 clip 7 WAV by imonacan
The second clip is a very short clip which I edited down from the first real time 2:18 recording to only 6 seconds to isolate just the four sounds of the “bangs” and “heavy crash”.
NESRA Expedition 7-31-09 - 8-2-09 1 edit 3 wood knocks and crash WAV clip by imonacan
The third clip is an enhanced version of the second short 6 second clip that fellow NESRA researcher Chris Bartow modified using Steinberg Wavelab software to remove most of the background noise of the rain. Though much of the rain noise has been removed, the “bangs” and “heavy crash” sounds themselves have taken on artificially created tones. As a result of removing the background rainfall noise, these tones are significantly deeper sounding than the actual tones I recorded but it does make it easier to hear the four sounds more clearly.
Chris B Enhanced 3 wood knocks and crash 6 sec clip 7 b WAV by imonacan
So what do you think made these sounds?
