If you decide to visit Fishlake National Forest in Utah and you’ll be in the midst of an enormous mountain.
It’s one of the biggest living forms on the planet that is an aspen massive quaking aspen that it even has its own name — Pando which is Latin meaning “I expanded.”
You could think that Pando as a large area of forests of thousands of individual trees. However, in reality it’s all one tree, connected to one root system.
In a sense Pando “redefines forests,” claims Lance Oditt who runs the non-profit Friends of Pando.
What began as a single seed is now spread across 80 football fields, and weighs in at 6000 tons.
“They appear like tree trunks to us however stems is the correct word in science,” He says. “They reach 80 feet in space.”
Oditt is always seeking more ways to navigate his way about a tree this massive. He was thinking: “What would happen if we had a sound conservationist take a picture of the tree? What might a geologist for instance, learn from it, or even an animal biologist?”
Around one year ago, Oditt invited the sound performer Jeff Rice to visit Pando and capture the tree.
“I simply jumped in and began to record all the information I could in every way I was able to,” says Rice, who made the trek to the majestic aspen in July.
Rice states audio recordings don’t have to be only pieces of art.
“They also serve as an account of the location in time, species, and the overall condition of the environment,” he says. “You can make use of these recordings as an indicator of how the conditions in the environment change.”
In the middle of summer, the aspen’s foliage is at their biggest. “And there’s a beautiful shimmering effect to Pando as you walk through the forest,” says Rice. “It’s like having a presence when the winds blow.”
That’s the sound Rice wanted to capture in the first place – that sound made by those vibrant lime green leaves flapping in the breeze.
He attached mics for contact to each leaf and received this sound as a result:
The leaves were characterized by “this percussive effect,” he says. “And I was sure that these vibrating leaves would generate an enormous amount of vibration in this tree.”
Rice set off to capture the tree-wide rumble amid an intense thunderstorm. “I was in a huddle and huddled in a corner trying to keep out of the glare. When storms hit Pando it’s pretty massive. They’re quite dramatic.”
The wind that blew through the numerous leaves gave Rice an opportunity to capture the tree.
“We discovered this amazing opening within one of the stems that I’ve named”the Pando portal” the man says.
Through that port the musician lowered a microphone until it was in contact with the huge roots that were below.
This is the result:
“As as soon as the wind began to blow and the leaves started to shake,” Rice says, “you could hear this incredible low Rumble.”
The vibrations, he claims they were passing through the branches and trunks of Pando and down to the earth.
“It’s almost as if the entire Earth is moving,” says Rice. “It simply emphasizes the power of all the leaves that are shaking, and the connection, I think of it all as a whole.”
He also caught the bark of the
And lastly the landscape:
Rice and Oditt present these recordings this week at the
Acoustical Society of America meeting
in Chicago.
“This is the tune of this ecosystem This trees,” says Oditt. “So now we understand that the sound is another way that to understand this tree.”
The recordings have provided Oditt with research concepts, including using sound to map out Pando’s root system. Above all, they’re an audio record of the leviathan at the present moment.
“We need to bear in the mind,” says Oditt, “that it has been changing shape and form for about 9000 years. I refer to it as”the David Bowie problem. It’s always creating new ways to be!”
Now, we’ve been able to increase the volume so that we can listen to Pando singing as the solo baritone he’s always been.
