PORCUPINE MOUNTAINS WILDERNESS STATE PARK
PORCUPINE MOUNTAINS WILDERNESS STATE PARK
Artist in Residence
During my artistic residency, I immersed myself in the vividly wild landscape of the Porcupine Mountains, collecting sound as I hiked and allowing this natural environment to speak to me about spring’s message – a message of renewal and rebirth, and such a fleeting moment, one so transitory, we could almost miss if we’re not listening carefully.
Spring is like a glimpse into heaven and offers us a chance to be renewed. It teaches us about life’s insatiable and insistent demand that we start over each year and open ourselves to the wonder of hope.
What is the sound of wind in early spring, pushing through the tall graceful hemlocks, their fanning arms caressing all beneath them?
Or your feet crunching through last autumn’s leaves, a bleached mat beneath quickly melting snow as thousands of ephemerals urgently reach to the warming sun?
Spring in the Porcupine Mountains is loud – and raucous.
It’s a twitchy chorus of colorful migrating warblers and silvery cascades of spring melt rushing over ancient lava flows. The sound of the season – when one would be wise to pack both a bug net and snowshoes – urgently demands our attention.
Whenever one hears a wood thrush she is young, and Nature is in her spring; wherever she hears it, it is a new world and a free country, and the gates of heaven are not shut against her.
And it’s particularly sensual in the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park, where billion-year-old lava flow meets primary forest; where towering hemlock and hardy oak create mini microclimates; where trails bring us near, but not quite within, secret recesses teeming with life.
Affectionately knows as the “Porkies,” these mountains abut Lake Superior on the northwestern part of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. The park was established in 1945 to save the largest stand of hemlock and hardwood in the Great Lakes, 35,000 acres to be exact.
Untouched virgin woodland is tucked deep under an escarpment of volcanic basalt, dramatically sculpted by the most recent re-advance of the Wisconsin Glacial Episode, aptly called the Greatlakean.
This ridge-line is perfectly situated as if a viewing platform to a “forest museum,” one filled with an ecologically diverse system including gray wolf and coyote, beaver and otter, fisher, marten, and minks, bobcats, lynx and cougar, 200 black bears, and, thousands of migrating and resident birds.
The greening of the earth, the sun’s warmth, the ecstatic singing make everything feel easier, as if all things are possible.
That includes the passerine or perching warblers, the males wearing their most colorful outfits only in springtime. Thirty-four different species have been identified in Michigan with songs as buzzy as the insects they eat.
Their brilliant spring plumage contrast with the spring’s subtle hue, an inversion of autumn’s. Less brilliant, maybe, but can be likened to a promise of new life, leaves subtlety delicate in fluorescent lime or simply a smudgy brown fuzz against a Robin’s egg blue sky.
Here in the Porcupine Mountains, nature is boisterous when in her spring, but that moment like all of life, is fleeting and brief. It’s so transitory, we could almost miss out if we’re not fully present.
Spring is like a glimpse into heaven and offers us a chance to be renewed. It teaches us about life’s insatiable and insistent demand that we start over each year and open ourselves to the wonder of hope.
What is the sound of wind in early spring, pushing through the tall graceful hemlocks, their fanning arms caressing all beneath them?
Or your feet crunching through last autumn’s leaves, a bleached mat beneath quickly melting snow as thousands of ephemerals urgently reach to the warming sun?
Spring in the Porcupine Mountains is loud – and raucous.
It’s a twitchy chorus of colorful migrating warblers and silvery cascades of spring melt rushing over ancient lava flows. The sound of the season – when one would be wise to pack both a bug net and snowshoes – urgently demands our attention.
Whenever one hears a wood thrush she is young, and Nature is in her spring; wherever she hears it, it is a new world and a free country, and the gates of heaven are not shut against her.
And it’s particularly sensual in the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park, where billion-year-old lava flow meets primary forest; where towering hemlock and hardy oak create mini microclimates; where trails bring us near, but not quite within, secret recesses teeming with life.
Affectionately knows as the “Porkies,” these mountains abut Lake Superior on the northwestern part of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. The park was established in 1945 to save the largest stand of hemlock and hardwood in the Great Lakes, 35,000 acres to be exact.
Untouched virgin woodland is tucked deep under an escarpment of volcanic basalt, dramatically sculpted by the most recent re-advance of the Wisconsin Glacial Episode, aptly called the Greatlakean.
This ridge-line is perfectly situated as if a viewing platform to a “forest museum,” one filled with an ecologically diverse system including gray wolf and coyote, beaver and otter, fisher, marten, and minks, bobcats, lynx and cougar, 200 black bears, and, thousands of migrating and resident birds.
The greening of the earth, the sun’s warmth, the ecstatic singing make everything feel easier, as if all things are possible.
That includes the passerine or perching warblers, the males wearing their most colorful outfits only in springtime. Thirty-four different species have been identified in Michigan with songs as buzzy as the insects they eat.
Their brilliant spring plumage contrast with the spring’s subtle hue, an inversion of autumn’s. Less brilliant, maybe, but can be likened to a promise of new life, leaves subtlety delicate in fluorescent lime or simply a smudgy brown fuzz against a Robin’s egg blue sky.
Here in the Porcupine Mountains, nature is boisterous when in her spring, but that moment like all of life, is fleeting and brief. It’s so transitory, we could almost miss out if we’re not fully present.
Porcupine Mountains, Michigan
It was easy walking through the “Porkies” in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, but strikingly soulful.
making art in the Porcupine Mountains
It was early spring loud with birds and falls for my Artist-in-Residence at the Porcupine Mountains.
notes from the Porkies
I hiked and recorded sound but letting the Mountains speak to me in its own way, was pure magic.
Alison Young
Alison Young is an audio storyteller, combining personal essay with found sound.
With over 12,000 miles logged as a backpacker on six continents and a background as an award winning professional musician and syndicated radio host, her artistic practice reflects an enduring curiosity in how we perceive the world aurally.
Her art form of “Audio Narratives” captures a time and place in sound. Through carefully chosen words, impeccable vocal inflection plus the precise placement of clips from the natural world, these essays-in-sound spark the imagination, causing listeners to fill in visual gaps and create their own unique experiences. You might describe an audio narrative’s impact like “a picture book read aloud.”
Alison Young’s audio narratives are heard widely on the Blissful Hiker™ podcast, which has received over 100,000 downloads. She is thrilled to have been invited to the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness as an Artist-in-Residence to immerse herself in this vividly wild soundscape.
Porcupine Mountains, Michigan
It was easy walking through the “Porkies” in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, but strikingly soulful.
making art in the Porcupine Mountains
It was early spring loud with birds and falls for my Artist-in-Residence at the Porcupine Mountains.
notes from the Porkies
I hiked and recorded sound but letting the Mountains speak to me in its own way, was pure magic.
Alison young
Alison Young is an audio storyteller, combining personal essay with found sound.
With over 12,000 miles logged as a backpacker on six continents and a background as an award winning professional musician and syndicated radio host, her artistic practice reflects an enduring curiosity in how we perceive the world aurally.
Her art form of “Audio Narratives” captures a time and place in sound. Through carefully chosen words, impeccable vocal inflection plus the precise placement of clips from the natural world, these essays-in-sound spark the imagination, causing listeners to fill in visual gaps and create their own unique experiences.
You might describe an audio narrative’s impact like “a picture book read aloud.”
Alison Young’s audio narratives are heard widely on the Blissful Hiker™ podcast, which has received over 100,000 downloads.
She is thrilled to have been invited to the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness as an Artist-in-Residence to immerse herself in this vividly wild soundscape.
Alison Young
Alison Young is an audio storyteller, combining personal essay with found sound.
With over 12,000 miles logged as a backpacker on six continents and a background as an award winning professional musician and syndicated radio host, her artistic practice reflects an enduring curiosity in how we perceive the world aurally.
Her art form of “Audio Narratives” captures a time and place in sound. Through carefully chosen words, impeccable vocal inflection plus the precise placement of clips from the natural world, these essays-in-sound spark the imagination, causing listeners to fill in visual gaps and create their own unique experiences. You might describe an audio narrative’s impact like “a picture book read aloud.”
Alison Young’s audio narratives are heard widely on the Blissful Hiker™ podcast, which has received over 100,000 downloads. She is thrilled to have been invited to the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness as an Artist-in-Residence to immerse herself in this vividly wild soundscape.
Many thanks to the Friends of the Porkies Artist-in-Residence program at Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park for making this art possible.
