Recently Heard: Pacific Moon

Gary Stroutsos - Pacific Moon


This is, for the most part, background music, but I say that in a good way. Relaxing flute music, with percussion, keyboards, koto, and - not as prominent as on some similar recordings - ocean sounds.

I suppose I should be disappointed that the oceanic bits are minimal, as I picked this up as a souvenir of my visit to Mystic Seaport and Mystic Aquarium and the presence of the waves is what coaxed me to even consider this recording. You see, I used to collect forest sound recordings because I lived in the city, near the ocean. Now that I live in the forest, I'm good with those sounds, and I need to supply the oceanic thing.

Unfortunately, I'm simply not disappointed. Gary's a flute player - and a very good one - so that's what you get the most of here. Although the Pacific of the title is further clarified on liner notes as referring to the northwest coast of the United States, much of the soundscape has heritage in the other side of the Pacific rim. A notable exception to this is Nights of Quiet Stars, which has more of a Mediterranean or Middle Eastern influence.

Stone Stairs

Justin and I relocated a few large rocks - most from around the Chestnut Grove area of Stone Stream, one was the decent sized stone we uncovered when planting winterberry holly, down in the Flood Plain at the bottom of Spruce Alley. We've arranged them on the back bank between the heather and heath, joining the path into the back woods and the deck. We still need to dig them in and set them before they're walkable.

Found two salamanders under two of the largest rocks - the ones that wound up being the start and end of our stair way.

Added one of the stones to the foundation border. We've got 5-10 feet left of border to finish the section along the garage windows and the kiwi trellis. After that, we've only got, oh, maybe another 250-300 feet to go! I'm thinking of going down to the new place across the street and see if he wants any of his rocks hauled away - that lot is mostly loose rocks. And, judging by the way the Rachel River used to disappear into that area, a sinkhole in the making. I can only hope the house won't disappear, although there's some chance of that because the previous owner re-routed the flow along the street to try to dry things out.

We've got one more known, buried monster rock in the Grove, where we tried to plant a hazelnut shrub earlier this year. Now that the ground's not half-frozen and has dried out, we should be able to wedge it out of there. Might start digging up ones in the lawn. I kind of like the look of them, but if kids run around and fall on them it might go better and need less antiseptic and bandages if the rocks happened to be elsewhere.