The Song of the Merced River begins with snow melting into music on the side of Mt. Lyle. Gurgles, trickles, rushes and booms present the full range of water sounds in a series of portraits that are arranged in correct sequential order before ending in Yosemite Valley

In 1993, I began to study the life of John Muir, first as a curiosity and then as an obsession when I realized that this man was possibly the world's greatest listener at a time when the world was its most musical. His journals contained the words, music, song, and voice in almost every paragraph to describe the sounds of nature.

I repeated his walk from San Francisco to Yosemite and learned more about environmental listening than I thought possible.

Never shall I forget these glad cascade songs, the low booming, the roaring, the keen, silvery clashing of the cool water rushing exulting from form to form beneath irised spray; or in the deep still night seen white in the darkness, and its multitude of voices sounding still more impressively sublime.--John Muir, from My First Summer in the Sierras.

My only goal from 1993-1994 was to record the sounds of the Merced River from birth to maturity and produce that journey as one long, ever-changing song. Each place from the side of Mt. Lyle to Yosemite Valley would be tagged during the recording process to allow correct arrangement in the studio. To minimize studio manipulation as much as possible, I waded into the water to pan the microphones to follow the flow; the booming tones of the falls were achieved by hand-placing the microphones into rock crevices. Anything that a person hears in this recording is achievable with the naked ear, calmly bent, as Muir would say.

More than 400 sound portraits were recorded during these two years. All were carefully considered before selected some to arrange in one continuous, fluid song. During the 49 minutes of this production you hear some calm periods; sometimes river meanders and sometimes lakes. This is the Song of the Merced River.