The Sound Forest

In July of 2023, I camped in Wateree Lake State Park in South Carolina. I got there in time to take the nature trail and do some writing before bedtime.

At first, there was nothing notable about the trail to distinguish it from other places I had visited. There were trees, squirrels, and mosquitoes – nothing unusual there. After finishing my walk, I decided there was something, but not the type of thing I could take a picture of.

In one spot, I kept hearing whirring noises around me, but never saw anything. They must have been very fast birds.

In another spot, there was a hollow knocking. Was it from inside the trees?

For a while, mosquitoes surrounded me and I could hear nothing else, but then I passed under one tree and suddenly heard multiple mosquito-like noises in each ear of unusually high pitch and volume. I ducked and ran a few steps and it went away. What was it?

This is a sound forest.

Because there was so much noise, I did not hear the deer (and they did not hear me) until we were almost on top of each other. I saw deer four times. The second time, there were eight or more. They leaped through the reeds to get away from me. Why? Do I smell that bad?

I saw this holy tree:

I saw strange mounds of extra hard dirt. There were many.

A piece of bark was yellow on the inside. It’s much brighter in person than the camera makes it look.

I also put on my weird Dan glasses and saw these spooky, paranormally floating branches:

I saw this tree transforming into a border being. Don’t worry; now that I’ve collapsed its wave function by observing it, it won’t grow any bigger. That’s why I take these trips. I’m just doing my part to keep the woods safe.

I met this friendly alien observer doing the same thing I was:

OH NO!!!! THE PICNIC TABLES ARE INVADING LAND!

More sounds:

That evening, there were more sounds. Right near the campsite was a tree full of vultures who would fight each other for good perches.

There were cicadas, but just as twilight began and the fireflies started up, a new type of cicada dominated the forest orchestra. It sounded like a thousand large trucks backing up with their alarms on. Sometimes they would synchronize and sometimes not.

Just as it got truly dark and the fireflies and cicadas wound down, something else took over. They might have been birds or frogs. I never saw them, but my ears traced them to the trees. Each had one spot and never moved. They were loud.

This is a sound forest.

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