This is my last Long Swamp post. I promise. My last Long Swamp post from 2019-07.
As I mentioned in last night’s Dusk post, I’ve fallen in love with the mountains of the Okanogan. The wet meadows, swampy bogs, dense forests, deep riparian zones, grassy ridge tops, and more are perfect for finding sonically rich, naturally quiet locations. Most of the special places are difficult to reach from Seattle, but that’s fine by me. It means more opportunities to record with without interruption.
Okay, it’s true. I’ve fallen in love with the Okanogan mountains, with the wet meadows, swampy bogs, dense forests, grassy ridge tops, and more. Most of the naturally quiet locations are a little difficult to reach from Seattle, but that’s fine by me. It just means more opportunities to record with without interruption.
On the night of 2019-07-17 I camped, once again, near Long Swamp. I’d spent the previous night and Dawn at the Long Swamp Campground (https://soundcloud.com/soundeziner/long-swamp-dawn), but this night I found a location further up the drainage with more open water.
Just a few miles away and a little farther up the mountains from Thirtymile Meadows can be found Long Swamp, a very large, highly biodiverse wetland complex.
Like the wet meadows, swamps in this area form through the collection of meltwater of the preceding winter. Unlike the shallow bowls of the meadows, though, the swamps form in the shallow creased valleys between rising prominences. Sometimes the water drains away into a creek at the end of the of the valley, but they are just as likely to simply seep slowly into the topsoil to re-appear elsewhere as a natural spring. Long Swamp does both.
Sinlahekin Valley is the heart of the Sinlahekin Wildlife Area, a large unit managed by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. A mixture of ranch land, managed big-game area, protected wildlife refuge, and dedicated recreation area, Sinlahekin is a beautiful, bio-diverse and extremely habitat diverse region protected from human over-run more from remoteness than anything else.
Okay, we’re now at mid-March, 2017. A year ago this month we were in the midst of Kickstartingthis project. How have we done? What are the hits and misses, successes and failures we’ve had along the way?
I hadn’t originally intended to stop in the Colockum Wildlife Area. In fact, it was a last minute decision made at a pit stop for gas. My original destination had been the Toppenish National Wildlife Refuge before continuing on to pick up my daughter from a camp in Central Oregon. I’m glad I stopped and made the decision to stay instead of continuing as it turns out the main accessible areas of Toppenish are flooded with anthropogenic noise, mainly from the the busy highway that connects to the main entrance. While it would have helped illustrate the problems with the invasion of human-caused noise pollution, it would have been a miserable and likely wasted trip.
Continue reading Colockum Wildlife Area, July 05-09, 2016
