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Post by sasha on Aug 22, 2023 12:17:57 GMT -5
I've been documenting the natural regrowth of a piece of my land that was clear-cut back in 2009, by assembling photographs of the tract into a time-lapse video/slideshow. I'd last updated the video in 2020 - but when I tried adding the most recent photos, I discovered that the video project files were irrecoverably damaged, probably from my computer crash last year. So I rebuilt it from scratch.
Recreating the audio was the most tedious part of the project - the construction sounds blended easily, but the natural ambience was a project in itself. It consisted of a half-dozen or more parallel stereo tracks that needed to be tweaked and aligned: individual bird calls that needed to be isolated from their backgrounds, and converted from monaural to a kind of faux stereo. Then there was air traffic contamination of the raw recordings (accompanied by my own muttered indelicacies), and an unfortunate tendency for Audacity (audio software) and Magix (video software) to get into pissing contests whenever I tried updating the soundtrack while it was in use by the video software. If it weren't for knowing when taking a break was smarter than trying to push through, I might still be at it.
Anyway - the latest incarnation of a decade(s) long project. Stay tuned for 2024.
youtu.be/qW4QI4DQnqY
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Post by goldenmyst on Aug 22, 2023 12:29:17 GMT -5
What a wonderfully inspiring video presentation on the resilience of life. Truly great work my friend. Coming from me, a former hiker of the wooded world, this is great.
John
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Post by sasha on Aug 23, 2023 5:54:45 GMT -5
Thanks, John - left to itself, Nature wlll heal most minor insults we might inflict. I've often fantasized about a park consisting of, say, 100 acres, laid out in straight line (or maybe a serpentine). Every year, the park managers clear-cut 1 acre - then leave it alone. Next year, clear-cut the adjacent acre. Repeat. In 100 years, each acre will have been cleared, with the 1st having had 100 yrs to regrow, the next having had 99 yrs, etc. - so walking through them would be like walking through Time - a visual, real-time demonstration of forest succession at work. I can't afford to buy 100 acres, much less 100 acres laid out in a line - but I can watch this corner of my little spread grow from bare ground to grass to scrub to brush and eventually to forest.... if only I could see it through to the end!
A similar thought occurred to me while walking a wilderness trail at my favorite WMA just a few days ago - on the role of statistical probabilities in the evolution of trails - more of a program hack than real-life experiment - symptomatic, I guess, of having too much time on my hands!
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Post by goldenmyst on Aug 23, 2023 7:34:23 GMT -5
I too have observed forest succession though not gradually. There is a forest in my old neighborhood in Natchez, Mississippi, where I spent most of my free time as a child. We cleared trails through it and built a treehouse there. I returned over a decade later as an adult and the trails were overgrown with bushes and grass. The treehouse we made was in ruins, just boards nailed to trees. It provided a sobering reflection on the passage of time and my aging.
John
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