Meet the sound artist who's exploring the symphony of nature at Rocky Mountain National Park
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ESTES PARK, Colo. — It’s a quiet early morning in Rocky Mountain National Park. As hikers walk on the Upper Beaver Meadows trail, artist Garrison Gerard stands at a nearby stream. He takes out a small buoy-like microphone connected to a cable. He’s holding what's called a hydrophone.
“When we put it in there, it's going to hear every little bit of sound,” he said.
He lowers the cable into the water and puts on his headphones. Instead of hearing the sound of water flowing, the hydrophone picks up the vibrations in the water. It sounds kind of like a xylophone, making little “plink” noises that start as small bubbles and get louder and deeper.
“When you move it over rushing water, it's — not to be cliché — like a symphony of sounds,” he said. “You can play like a whole piece just moving around and just hearing the sounds of the different parts of the river.”
Rocky Mountain’s Artist-In-Residence program was on a seven-year hiatus due to needed repairs at the cabin and a change of leadership, but this summer, it's back.
Gerard was one of the six artists selected. But his “art” is different from a painting or a photograph. He records natural sounds of the earth and uses them in electronic or orchestral pieces.
In order to collect the sound, he conducts an acoustic survey. In theory, it’s simple: he goes on an extended hike and listens to what’s around him. He carries a variety of different microphones, from the buoy hydrophone to a geophone, which is a microphone with a spike on the end that he buries in the ground to measure the vibrations of the earth.
“Our neighbors around the cabin probably think that I'm crazy. They see this person out with headphones on, wandering with cables over rocks and stuff,” he said. “It's like (they’re saying), ‘Can't you just like, you know, paint the scenery, like all the normal artists?'"
But his sound surveys tell him a lot about the level of biodiversity in an area and how it has changed over time.
Scientists have used hydrophones to track the number of whales in oceans. They have used another device called Audio Moths to listen to and track which birds are migrating through an area. The devices have also been used to help solve crimes, such as hearing gunshots to track poachers in the Amazon.
Gerard isn't looking for poachers. He's focused on ways to “listen through the park” and learn how the landscape responds to things like the number of elks bugling in a particular area.
He recently used a geophone to see how tourists alter the sound of the land. It sounds like people marching in the snow.
“We're used to a step being pretty quiet, but you hear how much noise it actually makes in vibration underground,” he said.
He wants more people to think about what they’re hearing. After spending two weeks at the park, he had one main observation.
“It’s just so busy, and there's so much constant road noise,” he said. “Not that that's bad. People should come and enjoy it, but just thinking about what impact does that have on the soundscape?”
Rocky Mountain’s picturesque landscapes, unique biodiversity, and close proximity to Denver have made it the nation's fifth-most-visited park, with about four million visitors annually in the past decade.
“It's hard to disperse people away from that park,” said Tracy Coppola with the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA). “It's such a crown jewel.”
While visitors are enjoying Rocky Mountain, they’re also leaving a detrimental footprint. The park needs to spend more than $200 million on repairs and upgrades — the most of any national park in Colorado. The money would be used for trail maintenance, additional parking, and sewer improvements.
Additionally, before the timed entry system was put into place, Coppola said the public was not able to have "rich interactions" with rangers and the overall esteem of the park was impacted by overcrowding.
Now, park officials have worked to manage the influx of people with the new system. Even with the increased crowds, the environmental impact remains low, and Coppola believes the system has made for a better visitation experience overall.
But this is not a "one and done" system, Coppola said. The park is still adapting and it’s a difficult balancing act.
“We want these places to continue to be celebrated and accessible, but then we also want to protect the park,” she said.
“Artists like Thomas Moran and William Henry Jackson actually produced artwork that helped inspire Washington D.C. to establish parks like Yellowstone and other early national parks,” said Shari Orr, the program manager of the Volunteers-In-Parks program with the National Park Service, which oversees the Artist-In-Residence program.
The relationship between artists and political leaders continued through the years, leading to the creation of Artist-In-Residence programs at 50 parks across the country.
Rocky Mountain’s program is one of the oldest, beginning in 1984. Selected artists stay at a cabin in the park for two weeks. They host community programs, work on their art, and engage with the public.
“We want to help people understand more about the resources that we're protecting, whether that's natural spaces, cultural spaces, historic spaces, and we want them to walk away with a meaning that's personal to them,” Orr explained.
It doesn’t matter if the artist makes quilts, creates a comedy sketch, or writes a recipe book. Orr said such creative mediums amplify a message of conservation in ways that are more transformative than reading a park sign.
“You're really going from visitor to, like, a steward of this resource and of this special place,” she said. “(We hope) that they're walking away hopefully a more informed person and maybe a better person because of those reflections that they've had.”
That’s what Joe Norman wants to do. He’s a Loveland-based steel sculptor who was also selected for a residency.
Many of his works feature two pictures or words that are mixed together but distinct from a certain angle. From one side, you may see the word “rage.” Walk to the other side, and you see the word “hope.”
“If I had to summarize it (my art) in one word, it would be the word, ‘And,’” he said. “I like the idea of making sculptures that have more than one thing in them, to say, there's a spectrum in this idea.”
Similar to Gerard, Norman’s main focus for his residency is exploring the role of wilderness and whether people are managing and interacting with it appropriately. He wants to talk with park rangers and visitors about how they interact with the outdoors and whether they wrestle with the notion of humans improving or degrading the landscape.
“I think that's still a question. I'm not really sure we can,” he said. “I hope we can, but, you know, jury's still out.”
He wants to create a sculpture that starts a conversation about conservation while the idea is fresh — and within the park's boundaries.
“Photographers are very good about transporting someone to a place that they're no longer at,” he said. “I think I'm more interested in having people ask questions about the place that they're in while they're there and they see the sculpture.”
Once he creates a piece, there’s no way to tell how it impacted people, but Norman knows it will serve an important purpose.
“You could sit down and read the script of The Godfather, or you could watch the movie The Godfather, and they're two completely different experiences,” he said. “If we want to discover our place in the world like we need writing, we need art. If we start curtailing one of those, I don't think we get a full picture of what we're actually doing here.”
Back at the park, Gerard is walking around with his microphone and headphones. Within a few minutes, he hears the rhythmic buzzing of bugs and new chirping noises.
“It gets me even more interested than normal in learning about what bird species that is, the insect species,” he said. “Even the plants – every plant makes a different sound as the wind goes through.”
Gerard hopes his work will remind people of their influence on the soundscape, and help them form a deeper connection with the park’s ecosystem.
“I think that in taking the time to listen and taking the time to hear what's around us, it really changes how we approach everything,” he said. “It just, I think, helps reframe your thought that we're a part of this web that's all related to each other.”
Norman is finishing up his residency, and Garrison Gerard finished his a few weeks ago. Their work will be viewable online or in the park next summer.
