We are back at Tahoma / Mount Rainier this week for another soundwalk. These hikes were made in June, 2024, on a weekend father and son getaway. The recordings were edited to focus on the natural soundscape (but you can make out four feet scuffling along the trail at certain points.)

I’ve always felt a strong pull to Tahoma, having hiked around it on the Pacific Crest Trail in August, 1994. It snowed that August in the higher elevations; the biggest, wettest snowflakes I’ve ever seen and felt in my entire life. It snowed and rained for three days, and it was all I could do to keep my down sleeping bag dry. I was soaked. It’s one reason my experience of the mountain was so dreamlike. I sensed it, but I didn’t really see it. So it goes with mountains, and so it was that I was eager to see it and experience it with my son, thirty years later.

We arrived late in the day. Skies were clear and the sun’s rays bathed the alpine meadow in golden light. The southeastern face of the mountain loomed over our shoulder as we climbed the trail to a picturesque bench. Birds were singing their hearts out. Western Warbling Vireo, Hermit Thrush, Fox Sparrow, Pine Siskin, Townsend’s Warbler, Yellow-rumped Warbler…. We had a snack there, and I set my recording hat 25 feet away to soak up the soundscape.

Bench Lake sat below us; its placid crystal clear water reflecting the subalpine setting. Both Bench and Snow Lakes sit in a cirque—a giant amphitheater with the mountain at one end—that was formed over time by glacial erosion. This amphitheater effect, I think, can be discerned in the birdsong; almost like they chose the spot to amplify their crooning.

Listening back, I’m struck at how the creek—Unicorn Creek—has the same urgent sound of Comet Falls; that wideband shhh of a young creek coursing through steep, boulder-strewn valleys. Such great names here.

Approaching Snow Lake, the creek slowed as it moved through a shaded gully where snow still covered the trail. It was like something from a movie, painted in blue tones of snow reflecting the evening sky.

We scrambled down to a boulder at the edge of Snow Lake and ate M&Ms. Snow Lake was quiet and so were we.

Since then, my son has grown. Instead of two inches shorter, he is now at least two inches taller than me. In the time since, he’s also made significant progress on the piano, and is now composing songs that sound to me like they could have been written by the artists we both admire: Dustin O’Halloran, Joep Beving, Sergio Diaz De Rojas…

It’s almost like life has been speeding up. The pace of change is dramatic. And yet I look at myself in the mirror, and I see the same person, with lines slightly more drawn. My changes are largely hidden from view, my advances scarcely measurable. People make pronouncements about how one decade of life will feel compared to another—as if we move through them all the same. “Make memories,” they say, as if it’s just that easy.

Thanks for coming along. As always Snow Lake Soundwalk is available on all music streaming services today, May 1, 2026.