"The Clearing" opens with Stephen Meadows' reading a poem describing crickets sounding like "a not quite monotonous jazz." His recorded voice is accompanied by brushes on snare drum and a rhythmically processed cricket sample recorded at Grass Valley, California in September 2018.
Tule Lake
Tule Lake, on the northern border of California, is both a place of great natural beauty and place of human conflict and sadness. The remote lake, in a high desert landscape of lava flows and pinyon juniper forest is good place for watching and listening to birds. It was also the site of the Modoc War in1872-1873 and the Tule Lake Segregation Center from 1942 to 1946. "Tule Lake" attempts to resolve the dissonance between the human and natural history of this place.
Kelso
Starting in 1905, the Union Pacific Railroad used Kelso Depot in the Mojave Desert to add extra steam locomotives to trains approaching Kessler Summit. Later, in 1924, the railroad added a restaurant and hotel rooms for passengers. With the advent of diesel locomotives, the depot became obsolete. The site is now a museum.
Tectonics
This selection gets its name from the faulted, shifting and polyrhythmic accompaniment.
