Soundwalk

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit chadcrouch.substack.comThe Sugarlands take their name from the sugar maple trees on these slopes of the Great Smoky Mountains. Writer Horace Kephart described the area this way in 1919 letter:I have just returned from a man-hunt in the Sugarlands of Sevier County, Tennessee. The Sugarland Mountain runs northwest from the Smokies between Clingman’s Dome and Mount Le Conte. On its southwestern side is the great gulf that I call “Godforsaken” in Our Southern Highlanders. On the northerly side, which is drained by the headwaters of the Little Pigeon River, is a similar descent, though into a narrower basin, or rather a gorge, exceedingly steep and rocky, gloomy with immense trees that crowd each other, and choked with laurel and other underbrush, fairly impenetrable except where the one lone trail leads down along a brawling torrent. These two basins, and the mountain dividing them, collectively go by the name of Sugarlands.Today, “Sugarlands” is most well known as the busiest gateway to Great Smoky Mountains National Park; home to a visitors center and the park headquarters just a few miles up the road from Gatlinburg, TN, a Mecca of the Appalachian souvenir economy. While Kephart described the Sugarlands in dark and mysterious tones as a “moonshiners’ paradise” in 1919, within a decade the people who lived there were largely bought out and cleared away for the park. Gatlinburg today sells legally distilled “moonshine” in mason jars to the park’s visitors, and the hills above town are dotted with a few preserved cabins and a mill buildings harkening back to that brief era.The parkway running through the Sugarlands Valley is routinely congested throughout the summer and on weekends. Vehicles crawl along, sounding to the stationary observer like a scanning radio dial; broadcasts of varying energy waft from car windows with a subtle doppler effect as they move along at a kiddie ride pace. About 15 miles to the northeast as the crow flies lies Locust Ridge, the childhood home to Dolly Parton, who remembers the area in a hushed soft focus:In my Tennessee mountain homeLife is as peaceful as a baby's sighIn my Tennessee mountain homeCrickets sing in the fields near byThese fables of Appalachia persist today, exerting influence on broader American culture. Both the peaceful childhood and mountain moonshiner narratives may serve as precursors for some of the identity politics that have played out in the last decade. A nostalgia for a simpler time might contribute to a sincere longing to Make America Great Again for example. Behind the appeal of the moonshiner flouting the law for a cause he considers justified is a logic that leads people to accept actions they’d otherwise question.As it turns out, Dolly Parton’s peaceful haven doesn’t take much effort to rediscover. You simply need to get out of the car and start walking away from the road. Soon enough the sounds of Sugarlands reveal themselves to you. As in “My Tennessee Mountain Home,” there are crickets, songbirds, and come nightfall, the glow of fireflies.Though the song also recalls, “on a distant hilltop an eagle spreads its wings”, this turns out to almost certainly be a nostalgic invention, or symbolism. While an eagle might have passed overhead occasionally, the Sugarlands were not then or now eagle habitat. More to the point, eagle populations had plummeted in the 50’s in 60’s due to DDT use in pesticides. They were listed as an endangered species in the continental US in the 60’s, and just 417 known nesting pairs were tallied in 1963.It’s unequivocally a better world for eagles today than it was in Parton’s childhood. You might say America is great again, for eagles, thanks to the Endangered Species Act of 1966. There are now over 300,000 bald eagles in the continental US. Meanwhile, the current administration has been systematically rolling back Endangered Species Act protections over the last year. A longing for the past, for a simpler time, a more affordable time, a peaceful time, a time of perceived abundance, is universal. No one political party can lay claim to it, to the exclusion of another. Any good-faith conversation will certainly uncover that when you add it all up, it’s a complicated picture, what is lost and what is gained over time, and why. To keep what we’ve still got it’s going to take cooperation and accountability.One thing I believe—and what keeps me interested in doing this soundwalk work—is that we must strive to nourish our connection to nature; to animals, to plants, to natural systems. If we veer off, disconnected in our hall of mirrors screens, we risk losing sight of our interconnectedness. Ideally this is accomplished firsthand, in the field, whatever that “field” might look like—it needn’t be a national park. But, I’m also receptive to the idea that vicarious exposure—caring about a place you’ve never been to, for example—through storytelling and media is beneficial too. My hope is that the environmental audio in my soundwalks can serve as this kind of tonic, a sort of quencher for the thirst of belonging to a functional ecosystem.Thanks again, for reading and listening. Sugarlands Soundwalk is available on all music streaming services October 30th, 2026. It will be followed by a sequel, Sugarlands Soundwalk II, the following week, Nov. 6th, 2026.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from the soundscape of the Smoky Mountains in October. I’d been there in the fall 25 years ago, but my memories were mostly confined to images, and a generalized sense of topography. What I found on return was a soundscape of crickets in the valleys, stridulating in a glacial crescendo—from a murmur in the afternoon to a full-blown cacophony in the gloaming of dusk. This was not new to me. It was the sound early autumn from my childhood, living among fields and orchards on the fringe of suburbia.The soundscape that was truly novel to me, that I’m sharing today, has a little bit of that: the breathing hum of crickets in the early evening. But the real soundmarks come from mammals—squirrels, more plentiful and more active than I can ever recall hearing. This was the sound of peak mast season.What is mast season? Mast was a term that was new to me. It is taken to mean the food that comes from bushes and trees: fruits, nuts, and seeds. “Hard mast” is principally acorns, beech nuts and hickory nuts, here in the Sugarlands, the western foothills of the Great Smokies. A “mast year” is a particularly abundant year for acorn and nut production, and every indication suggests 2025 was a genuine mast year in southern Appalachia. A 2025 article described, “oak production as the heaviest since 2012, with beech crops heavy enough that ground beneath beech trees was ‘littered with hulls... after squirrels feasted.’"I was hearing a squirrel feast! Here in the Sugarlands, hardwoods and oak forest commingle, so there's a lot of mast dropping in a small area. Squirrels get frantic and vocal during the harvest push before winter arrives—chattering, barking, leaf-rustling, and branch-shaking as they work the canopy.It was this abundance, this sense of life in the trees that encouraged me to reach for woodwinds and harmonium-like sounds in my composition. I wanted it to conjure that peace that comes after a hard day’s work feeling. The music bears more than a passing resemblance to my vinyl LP release Wildwood Trail Soundwalk earlier this year. Both are built up very simply with sets of slowly morphing chords, stacked in equal measure, set in a slow, breathing tempo. I rarely have the conviction that any one album is a good starting place for getting to know my work, but as I listen now and write this, it strikes me that this may at least be more accessible than many others. The music is uncomplicated, warm and reassuring. The sound of humming crickets, the rustle of crisp leaves, the crystalline “kuk-quaa” of squirrels chiming out, all come together in a soothing velvet haze—like the “Smoky” blue air from the faraway mountaintops coming down to settle in the valleys, in the slow transition to nightfall. Thanks for listening and reading along. Appalachian Autumn is available under the artist name Listening Spot on all streaming platforms Friday, October 16th. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chadcrouch.substack.com/subscribe

Panthertown Valley is a relatively small 6311-acre wilderness area in Nantahala National Forest in western North Carolina, in the Blue Ridge Mountains. It’s a little bit off the beaten track, but far from obscure, as the old promoter’s trick of slapping the label “Yosemite of the East” seems to have piqued interest over the decades. The Yosemite comparison owes itself to the granite features of the mountains that surround the valley. Proto-Half Domes, I guess. These smooth outcrops are a far cry from El Capitan, but they do possess a distinct character. Unlike the tectonic uplift and glacial scouring that happened in Yosemite, these dome faces were the result of magma cooling deep underground before being exposed by millions of years of weathering. If there is any superlative aspect that can be drawn in the comparison, it is that the formation here is much, much older. The granite underlying Panthertown Valley, the Whiteside granitic pluton, was intruded into the earth’s crust approximately 466 million years ago. The granite forming the cliffs and domes of Yosemite Valley was formed just 105 to 85 million years ago. The popular Panthertown Valley Trail to Mac’s Gap Loop is one of the most memorable hikes I’ve ever taken, topographically speaking. Does anybody else catalog wilderness experiences this way—as perceptions of topography? The overwhelming impression this place gives is one of a basin. When you peer down into the valley and scan the horizon, you see what looks like a rim, almost circular in definition. Of course this is not the way hydrology works. Panthertown Creek does not go down a drain in the middle, but slips out through a fold in the hills. The creek does linger though, there in the center. Indeed, Panthertown Valley features a rare high-elevation mountain bog on its valley floor, a wetland ecosystem fed by groundwater seeping from the surrounding granite.While fall paints the trees in shades of yellow umber, Venetian red, cadmium orange and the grasses in Naples Yellow, I couldn’t help but wonder what colors spring brought to the valley floor, festooned as they are with Rosebay Rhododendron and rare Pinkshell Azalea, an endemic shrub native only to a few high-elevation pockets in western North Carolina. Here in the understory Carolina Chickadees and Golden-crowned Kinglets ranged in foraging flocks while Carolina Wrens buzzed as they hopped along the downed wood. The valley was very quiet, enhancing the perception of being acoustically sheltered in a basin—or “cove” as they say in Appalachia—insulated from the sounds that roads invariably bring. This allowed me to appreciate the manifold cricket sounds: they purred, cooed, buzzed and blinked on and off. It was so nice to hear crickets this way: not in a chorus but distributed across the patchy habitat, in conversation with each other. “Halloo over there,” I imagined them saying. I looked toward fuzzier electric piano voices with this in mind, placing them alongside breathy flutes, mirroring the breeze and the cricket textures. I kept it spartan, as is my way. There are moments, if you listen closely, where you really hear the space here: the collective fir trees played by the wind, the dull sound of footsteps on granite, the constellations of cricket hum. My pictures really don’t do it justice. This is not a place that is about one vista, or one waterfall. It’s about exploring its contours, and for me, listening deeply.I found myself pondering time. The long and lonely time that it took for these rocky slopes to become the Yosemite of the East. I tried to picture the solvent action of water in time-lapse carting off the hills. I pictured the forest lifting and falling like the subtle dilation of an animal’s belly, breathing. Along the trail, Schoolhouse Falls proved to be a popular destination. Here one can walk behind the falls. That splotch of red is one such person, taking a picture through the falling water. Somewhere I am a splotch of colored pixels in his digital photo album. The name “Schoolhouse” is literal. There was once a small schoolhouse nearby likely serving the settler and logging camp populations in the early 1900s. Likewise Panthertown Valley is said to have got its name from the abundant Eastern cougar population here. An 1898 Asheville Daily Citizen article eulogizing a hunter described the valley vividly: “Bear and deer were very numerous in those days, and almost every night lying around our camp fire, we could hear the panther’s shrill scream over in Panthertown.” Old Joe Dodgins, the article’s subject, reportedly calculated his bear kills year by year, summarizing, “I can’t tell exactly, but I can count up over 300 and think I have killed nearer 400.”Panthertown Valley became the domain of the Moltz Lumber Company beginning in 1916. Moltz then built a 16-mile railroad in the valley and a sawmill in the Lake Toxaway area. Hundreds of workers were hired to peel tanbark from the hemlocks, and others were hired to carry out the logging. During the logging operations, perhaps 100 people had moved into the valley, most probably living in Moltz’s houses. (Dan Pittilo for the Sylva Herald)Land ownership passed from Moltz to Liberty Properties to Duke Energy, finally to The Nature Conservancy in 1989. The concept of a resort development in the valley was entertained in the 1960’s with a man-made lake, golf course and condominiums. The drive to the trailhead revealed a modified modern-day version of this concept, with high-end estate homes sprinkled in an enclave just west of the valley. One arterial bore the name New Settlers Way.Thanks again, for reading and listening! If you find yourself in the Blue Mountains, Panthertown Valley is a destination worth the trip. You won’t forget it. Panthertown Valley Soundwalk is available on all music streaming services October 2nd, 2026. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chadcrouch.substack.com/subscribe

Last year, around this time, I travelled to Durham, NC for a record label conference. The city reminded me of Eugene, OR, where I went to school for a short time. Both are university towns. Durham has a bigger population, and is just one node of a much larger urban area, but the downtown cores are similarly compact, pedestrian-friendly, and relatively quiet.My mission at the conference was to figure out how to grow my business and innovate my way toward prosperity. A tall order. Given that my business model is hyper-niche—capturing environmental recordings and creating instrumental musical suites—I was sifting ideas and prospects, feeling good about taking time to reflect and plan. As I walked to an evening event downtown, I was taken in by the sound of crickets in a sparsely filled surface parking lot. We have crickets in Oregon, of course, but perhaps not as many in our cities. The sound was both familiar and novel. I had my Sennheiser binaural headset in my pocket, and decided to capture the moment. From there I took a meandering walk into the heart of the city. This is one of my first urban soundwalks in the US—something that had long occurred to me to do, but never seemed particularly promising, aesthetically or commercially.But, as I was feeling the sensory excitement that comes with being in a new place, I reasoned it was high time to experiment. I let my ears lead the way. There are urban sounds throughout the recording, but they largely seem confined to the auditory horizon. The near field sound of the city is so quiet it could almost read as pastoral. As I padded into the downtown blocks, a fountain in the plaza of the Durham Convention Center beckoned me toward it. The shimmering sound put me in a kind of audio trance. I just stood there for several minutes—long enough to become self-conscious—figuring passersby might take me for a tweaker staring at the ground. I took a photo of the sidewalk to memorialize the moment.I felt a peace wash over me there, surrounded by people, cars, trains, energy, life. It was all very ordinary, but as I stood listening, I began to sense the extraordinary qualities of it too. I know that might sound hokey, but it’s true. I tried to convey that feeling in the score. Maybe it will translate, listening to it? That’s the hope, anyways. Once again, thanks for reading along and listening. Durham Night Soundwalk is available on all music streaming services September 18, 2026. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chadcrouch.substack.com/subscribe

What is the hike up to Burnt Lake without the greyed spectral snags of ancient old growth, killed, but not entirely destroyed, by fire? Would it be like walking through a graveyard with no gravestones? The stand of trees along the trail is uniform, almost homogenous. A mix of hemlock and Douglas-fir.Scattered among these conifer poles are columns, smoothed and greyed, sometimes hollowed out. They can measure four times as large in diameter. These are the markers of the great fire that gave Burnt Lake its name. The forest fire of 1904 started from a homesteader burning slash near what is now Rhododendron, on Aug 25th of that year. Dense smoke engulfed the slopes, reportedly blanketing Government Camp so heavily that visibility dropped to under half a mile. Another fire in 1906 burned off what the first one didn’t consume.On my way up I stopped at locations that struck my interest, both visually and sonically. Due to technical difficulties with my ancient iPad, however, I only made three sketches on this outing. The first was where a spring rivulet meandered with the trail:When I arrived at the lake, the mountain was obscured by clouds.The clouds were moving; shredding, scattering, opening, closing. The effect was tantalizing, revealing glimpses of Mount Hood, a looming sentinel across the valley at 11,250 ft tall. Burnt Lake is a glacial tern. As alpine glaciers expanded from the crest of Zigzag Mountain in the Pleistocene, ice carved out a steep-walled cirque amphitheater beneath East Zigzag Mountain. The lake basin is scooped directly out of volcanic rock. Morainal deposits impound the water, allowing snowmelt and spring water to pool into the basin.The clouds brought rain; short bursts of precipitation playing the placid lake surface and leafy margins like a chorus of little drums. I sat on a log absorbing it all, sketching the scene on my iPad. While my second attempt adorns the cover at the top, my first quick study looked like this:Thanks for reading along and listening. Burnt Lake is available on all music streaming services Sept 4, 2026. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chadcrouch.substack.com/subscribe

Today we are visiting Holland Park in west central London. But before we do, let’s zoom out. If you look at a map of central London you’ll see, within the spiderweb of roadways fanning out from the Thames, hundreds of small green rectilinear plots. Where I live, on the west coast of the United States, this symbology tends to translate as parks or open spaces, accessible to the public. Not so in London. The majority of these smaller bits of green are private parks; fenced, gated and surrounded by tall hedges. You need a key to get in.Thankfully the much larger green spaces, including the Royal Parks, are open to the public. The Royal Parks trace back to Henry VIII seizing land for royal deer hunting. In Hyde Park, Kensington Gardens, Regent's Park, and five others you’ll find a mix of woodlands and meadows, where Londoners now gather to commune with the naturalistic landscape in genuinely massive numbers. Holland Park is something of an outlier in this mix. The 54 acre site dates back to the 1600’s as the private gardens of Cope Castle, a mansion originally built on a 500 acre estate for Sir Walter Cope. The Youngest of Cope's daughters married Henry Rich, who became the 1st Earl of Holland in 1624, giving the house, and eventually the park, its name. Much of Holland House was destroyed in Blitz bombing raids. An Act of Parliament in 1953 finalized the sale of the estate to the government, with part of the grounds opened to the public that year.Holland Park feels smaller and more intimate than its acreage suggests. It’s quiet. Its few discrete entrances contribute to this feeling of privacy and intimacy. It’s also compartmentalized. It’s rigidly formal in the Dutch Garden;While woodlands sprawl on the north side;And a unique blend of the two near can be found near the center, in the Kyoto Garden:And so, it does not sound like the Royal Parks. There are far less visitors, more wildlife density, and less traffic noise from boulevards on the margins. To put it plainly, it’s my kind of city park.For my soundwalk score, I sought to capture the relaxed and hushed feel of the park in musical movements using electric piano, synthesizers, tuned percussion, electric bass, and woodwinds.Thanks for reading along and listening. Holland Park Soundwalk is available on all music streaming services August 21st, 2026. Author’s Note: I mixed up my dates, so this post arrived one week early. My new release for this week is Amsterdam Dusk, available under the artist name Listening Spot, on all streaming platforms today, Friday, August 14th. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chadcrouch.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit chadcrouch.substack.comBefore I begin, just a quick plug for my son, Sam, who I’ve mentioned briefly on here. Today marks the release of his first single, ever; “Tides”.Sam has developed really quickly in the last year. He started composing his own songs six months ago, and started making recordings just three months ago. He has a handful that are finished, but is in no particular hurry to release a debut album. “Tides” showcases his ear for melody, as well as the ease and expression he brings to the piano bench. Daily he fills our house with beautiful music, and now yours can be too! He asked me to make a cover, and I obliged with a construction paper collage that embraced the sun-bleached edges:Favorite, add, share, and smash that follow button wherever you stream music!Now, on to today’s soundwalk:Amsterdam has several lovely parks. Vondelpark is not the biggest, nor the most serene, but it is the oldest and perhaps the most beloved. It’s just so comfortable. It vibrates with life. It’s distinctly beautiful.The park almost feels like a series of outdoor living rooms. Every one is apportioned an open space, often a meadow, that gracefully embraces its visitors and beckons them to stay.Visitors can also find a quiet corner, among stately houses; a cafe overlooking a pond; a contemplative honeycomb garden; a sunny wading pool; a bench in the shade.On a summer night it seems like the park can accommodate thousands, affording the visitors a rich experience of togetherness without feeling crowded or overly noisy.This soundwalk was recorded on August 13th, nearly a year ago as I write this, in the pleasant afterglow of a warm summer day. Park visitors were spread out on blankets enjoying each other’s company, amongst the boisterous calls of Rose-ringed Parakeets. Cyclists clicked past with a little less urgency than during the day. The register of ease and joy can be heard within indiscernible snippets of passing conversations.To say I was charmed by Vondelpark is an understatement. I was bowled over. I wanted to do right by it with the music I composed for the soundwalk. I tried to incorporate intimate, convivial moments amongst broad sweeps; moments of steady tempo, and free time, moments that whispered and moments that welled up.Thanks for reading along and listening. Vondelpark Soundwalk is available on all music streaming services today, July 31st, 2026

A short post today, for a short piece. First off, one thing to be clear about is this is not Newcastle upon Tyne, UK Soundwalk. This is Newcastle, Northern Ireland, UK, at the foot of the enchanting Mourne Mountains. It’s quite a charming little seaside town. Not too posh, not too shabby. Maybe this even comes through in the environmental recording? Newcastle just feels so tucked-in. You can hop on the trail that starts just above sea level on the south end of town and hike all the way up to Slieve Donard, Northern Ireland’s tallest peak. Pretty remarkable really, and a stunning landscape. I did make a recording of said hike, but have not set about composing music for it yet. This short vignette of a piece came with the same sense of discovery and happenstance that accompanied landing in the little town by chance for a night last summer.Thanks for tuning in. Newcastle UK Soundwalk is available on all music streaming services today, July 24th, 2026PS. Last week I released another miniature album. Otter Point marries the sounds of the southern Oregon Cast with a composition for electric piano, synth, and dulcimer that plays well with this one, I think. Otter Point is available under the artist name Listening Spot on all music streaming services as of July 17th, 2026. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chadcrouch.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit chadcrouch.substack.comMaple Pass is a mountain pass loop trail in North Cascades National Park. It’s 6.8 miles, rated hard, and scores a 4.9/5 on alltrails.com. It’s about as good as it gets, really. I went there with my son a year ago now, to the day. It was great. Clear skies, warm sun, wildflowers in bloom, birds singing.A few weeks ago I mentioned a nearby hike, Cascade Pass, that didn’t go down quite like we hoped. This one happily exceeded all expectations.The trail rises from Rainy Pass, a subordinate saddle to the Cascade range divide about 5 miles to the east, at Washington Pass. Here the Pacific Crest Trail crosses Hwy 20 on its final 60 mile push toward the Canadian border. Emerging from the subalpine conifers, the trail traverses alongside Lake Ann, an emerald pool in a cirque with a picturesque tiny island. I am a slower climber than my son but I tried to keep apace, fighting the urge to stop and just listen for a spell. Warbling Vireo, Hermit Thrush, Western Wood Pewee, Dark-eyed Junco, Canada Jay and the peculiarly raspy (to my ear) Mountain Chickadee are heard along the trail. And, of course, the scrunch, scrunch of footsteps on the coarse trail.Climbing to Maple Pass, the trail affords vistas of the stunning North Cascades. Red Indian paintbrush, lupines, and bistort are scattered among the granite boulder shards on the ridge. It’s the type of scene that brings to mind the lyric, “the hills are alive with the sound of music”. My score picks up on this ebullient vibe by reaching for a painterly sound palette: big, reverb-drenched synth pads and undulating swarms of synthesized bell tones evoke the panoramic views adorned with colorful life on the margins. This is not intimate piano suite fare.It’s a popular hike on a summer day, and we certainly were not alone. The environmental audio has been spliced to focus on the biophony, as has been the case for most of my soundwalks. When we made it back to the trailhead I was astonished at how quick we made the transit. We shaved one or two hours off the estimated hike time, and yet time seemed to slip so slowly while we were out there.Thanks for reading and listening along. If you find yourself in the North Cascades and have the time and ability, don’t pass this hike up!Maple Pass Soundwalk is available on all music streaming services today, July 10th, 2026.

It’s funny how arrivals can turn into quiet affairs. Like, say, you’re walking along a trail with a friend and you get to a view or a waterfall or something and then slip into quiet. That’s how I’m feeling with this arrival.It is the arrival of my first LP, and the sound recording it contains, which both captures and takes inspiration from The Wildwood Trail in Portland, Oregon’s Forest Park. To recap, it’s a 30 mile linear trail through a 5000+ acre forest in the city. I’ve written quite a lot about it: its magnetism, its quirks, its creation, its history, its wildlife, the volunteers that keep the trails clear, and the art that it inspires. You can read up on it while listening to the forest ambience in every quarter, in my ten part series: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and this one makes 10. It’s virtual forest bathing! And now, well, here we are. The end of the trail, the launch of the album, and also a new beginning. It’s kind of strange to have an artifact after creating so many soundwalks memorialized only in pixels and a digital ephemera. This is a tactile thing in comparison, and while not as simple to distribute, it’s reassuring on some level. It turned out pretty good, if I do say so myself.It’s really amazing how the material holds the sound. It's all contained in the microscopic ridges of the infinitesimal canyon that spirals along the surface of the vinyl disc. I was curious how long that tiny canyon is, if you stretched it out and measured it, so I turned to Claude to work it out. It obliged my story problem in two seconds and spit out: approximately 3000 meters or 1.86 miles. I don’t know why, but I found that fascinating; picturing the groove like a gossamer ribbon spooling out on the Wildwood Trail itself for nearly 2 miles, shimmering in the wind like a sound wave. I must pay my respect and gratitude to the kind people at MusicOregon’s Echo Fund, and The Portland Office of Arts and Culture. Without an Echo Fund Grant this would not have come to pass. Thank you, Thank you. And to all of you who are reading this and who have shared moments of my journey or listened to my music, thank you. I hope this finds you well. Wildwood Trail Soundwalk is available on all music streaming services today June 26th, 2026. Find the limited run LP on Bandcamp. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chadcrouch.substack.com/subscribe