Sonoma Valley soundscape artist Bernie Krause searching for refuge after Nuns fire
Had he not been fleeing for his life, Bernie Krause might have brought out his audio equipment to record the sound of a nighttime inferno roaring through the forest outside his Glen Ellen home.
In his pioneering career as a soundscape ecologist, Krause, 79, has been on every continent recording wilderness and threats to its existence.
Over 50 years, he has amassed an audio archive of more than 5,000 habitats and 15,000 species and written seven books, earning Krause acclaim from scientists and artists, as well as invitations to give a TED talk and numerous presentations before prestigious academic bodies.
Krause stored the original recordings - some 500 reel-to-reel tapes in all - in his garage studio, thinking it as safe a place as any to protect his life’s work. The 10-acre retreat, which Krause shared with his wife and business partner, Kat, was the headquarters of Wild Sanctuary, a groundbreaking enterprise Krause started in 1968 with the novel goal of recording nature for entertainment purposes and as a quantitative means of assessing the long-term health of habitats.
But Wild Sanctuary lay in the path of an explosive October wildfire that decimated neighborhoods across Sonoma Valley, claiming more than 400 homes. The Nuns fire sent Bernie and Kat Krause fleeing into the night with only what they wore. It leveled their 3,000 square-foot, rammed-earth home, and along with it, the studio and Krause’s prized audio archive, as well as detailed field journals, photos, reference books and nearly 70 years of correspondence.
Losing all of their possessions was one thing. But equally disturbing for the Krauses was their newfound sense that no place provides refuge from what they perceive as a world dangerously on the precipice of irreversible environmental collapse.
“We stared global warming in its malevolent eye,” Bernie Krause said.
Standing in what used to be his living room on a recent morning, hazy sunlight reflecting off his yellow-tinted glasses, Krause noted the silence blanketing the fire-scarred hillside.
Prior to the fires, the couple reveled in nature’s daily orchestra at Wild Sanctuary, with regular visits from foxes, a bobcat, coyotes and even a mountain lion who occasionally hung out in a tree near the driveway, as if he were a family pet. The property, set above Henno Road, is at the crossroads of a major wildlife corridor spanning Sonoma Mountain and the Mayacamas range.
On this morning, the only sound was of a worker operating a power tool at a home higher on the ridge. All that remains of the Krauses’ home is the foundation. Their garden is dead and a chain-link fence surrounds a drained pool. A patio set singed by flames beckons, only now there is no one to enjoy the sweeping views of Sonoma Valley below.
“This used to be so alive,” Krause said.
Like thousands across Northern California affected by the October firestorms, Krause and his wife are trapped in a bewildering diaspora, shuttling from one rented home to the next while they try to move forward with their lives.
The Krauses face a particular dilemma. With Bernie approaching his 80s and Kat in her late 60s, they wonder whether they should rebuild in Glen Ellen or cut their losses and downsize, perhaps to a place less prone to natural disaster. At the same time, they worry about preserving Wild Sanctuary’s legacy and the vision for making soundscape ecology part of mainstream environmental science.
“He doesn’t want to be picking out cupboard door handles when he’s 83,” Kat said of her husband. “This time of our lives is very precious to us. We’re still healthy. We’re still mobile.”
“Our preference is to rebuild,” Bernie said. “We haven’t been able to find a place and the property is still viable. There’s water. There’s electricity.”
Prior to the fires, the couple had big plans for celebrating the 50th anniversary of Wild Sanctuary this year, including retrospectives of Krause’s work. His recordings have been featured in a variety of mediums, from movie scores and Nature Company soundtracks, to museum exhibits and art installations.
The recordings reflect 1,315 different types of habitats, from temperate forests and equatorial rain forest, to mangrove swamps and coral reefs. He’s also recorded in the Arctic tundra and the high desert.
Many of the audio tapes, recorded over a span of years, track disturbing changes in the pitches of animal voices because of myriad threats. Worse is when there is no sound at all, signaling an ecosystem’s demise, he said. In his book, “Voices of the Wild: Animal Songs, Human Din, and the Call to Save Natural Soundscapes,” Krause writes that more than half of his audio data “comes from sites (now) so badly compromised by various forms of human intervention that the habitats are either altogether silent or the soundscapes can no longer be heard in any of their original forms.”
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