This composition was originally conceived for a commission to compose a 4 channel / surround video art installation. When I returned to the original master 4 track tape recently, it had unfortunately deteriorated considerably over time. I transferred what I could of the original master tape to another 4 channel machine. I decided to go through the session notes and see if I could replicate it with basically the same setup as which it was originally recorded.

One of the original extended sequences had been programmed on the old Oberheim DS-2 Digital Sequencer with an ARP 2600 and an EML 101. I no longer owned the DS-2 or had the EML available. I was fortunately able to program the original sequence from the session notes into my old ARP Sequencer and a modern Moog Sequencer together. It was a fun challenge to salvage what damaged tracks were there and then re-create a new version of this piece, The slower sequence in the beginning is the recording being played back at half-speed from the Otrai reel to reel. Then around the half way mark the live sequencers come in and expand the elevation.

This piece came from my times passing through Mountain Lake Wilderness, Which is about 10 miles northwest of Pembroke, Virginia in Craig and Giles Counties in southwest Virginia. As well as Monroe County, West Virginia.
State route 615 passes along the western side of the wilderness, state route 635 passes along a section to the northwest, and SR 632 runs parallel to the wilderness on the southeast.

All throughout the 90s I used to travel extensively as a session and hotel musician. I would spend either all my free time exploring outdoors or in my hotel room, extrapolating all the great inspirations from these explorations into music. This area made a great impression on me and opened up many uncharted constellations of my own muse. So many views & sounds and such dynamics of compositional wilderness.

The area has a rich variety of wildlife, 43 species of mammals and over 70 species of birds include substantial populations of wild turkey, muskrat, beaver and gray fox. In addition small populations of least shrew, meadow jumping mouse, long-tailed weasel, striped skunk and the harvest mouse have been found. Endangered species of salamander may exist here.

Bird populations include red crossbill, winter wren, veery, black-capped chickadee, Blackburnian warbler, rosebreasted grosbeak, and cerulean warblers; birds found in high elevations and deep-woods.

Waters flowing south into Johns Creek provide habitat for the James spiny mussel, an endangered mollusk, and streams flowing north into Big Stony Creek support the candy darter, a colorful fish considered endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Bogs contain flexuouse peatmoss, red peatmoss, tawny cotton-grass, and wood grass, plants normally found in areas to the north. Cinnamon ferns, New York ferns and many other wetland plants are found in vernal pools. Southern mountain cranberry, flame azalea, pinxter, mayflower, yellow Clintonia are found along trails. The forests have been altered by logging in the 1920s and the loss of the American Chestnut by the chestnut blight. Besides red spruce and yellow birch, the forest includes eastern hemlock, a tree fast disappearing after infestation by the hemlock wooly adelgid, as well as oak and hickory common in the Virginia section of the Appalachians .

Spring wildflowers include bellwort, bloodroot, columbine, dwarf iris, fire pink, hepatica, jack-in-the-pulpit, lady slipper, ragwort, Solomon’s seal spring beauty, trailing arbutus trillium, trout lily, several varieties of violets, wild germanium, wild ginger and wintergreen. In summer and fall the flower display turns to black-eyed susans, boneset, goldenrods, grass of parnassus, great blue lobelia, Indian pipe, joe pye weed, milkweed, pokeweed, stiff gentian, and jewel weed. In addition there are flowering shrubs such as flame azalea, blue berry, dogwood, redbud, service berry and rhododendron.

Mountain Lake Wilderness ranges in elevation from about 2,200 feet (670 m) to over 4,000 feet (1,200 m). The area is bisected by the Eastern Continental Divide and has about 17 miles of hiking trails, including 5 miles (8 km) of the Appalachian Trail.

The area is part of the Ridge and Valley System of mountains. The intersection of Potts Mountain and Salt Pond Mountain create a plateau like area. Piney ridge runs along the northeast side of the wilderness and Little Mountain on the northwest. The area is on the Continental Divide; streams on the west side drain into Johns Creek, part of the James River watershed that flows into the Atlantic; and streams on the south east flow into the New River and onto the Gulf of Mexico.

Johns Creek once drained into the New River watershed, but millions of years ago the James River watershed expanded, capturing Johns Creek.

Rockcrops at White Rocks, War Spur Overlook, Bear Cliffs, and Windrock give outstanding views over the area.

It may be unique to associate electronic music studio composition with the everlasting impressions of wildlife, but my muse certainly does. Often times my senses immediately conceptualize these unreal sounds that being in the deep wilderness tend to evoke within me.

I personally feel it's in our extensive time in the wilderness that allows us to obtain expansive access to our own individual synesthesia. Once we pass beyond the threshold of our own sensitivity to the living world around us, the invisible limits of fabricated living environments dissolve and allow us to resonate the polarity of our own connection & conclusion to the living earth. I feel it's where the art of the spirit is most saturated. What a beautiful opportunity it is to unravel the defense mechanisms of the reactive mind. To dismantle the engram computer that we must install to navigate and survive the systems of the man-made momentum.

I'm grateful to be alive and to now be entering once again, a new chapter of returning to the dimensions of the deep woods. Through time, healing, expansion, gratitude & grace - I am hopeful and wishful to expand upon all I have had the privilege and pleasure to learn about music and sound. To be at the beginning again. Music is such a clarifying opportunity to discover the prism of the self and spirit in real time.

I'm forever a student and romantic for it and all the fruits it's forests harvests within us.

Love to All
-Lisa

January 11 2O19