Menghuan Pond at Yangmingshan NP, January 2025
Menghuan Pond at Yangmingshan NP, Taipei City, January 28, 2025
Yangmingshan is a national park and a popular tourist destination in Taiwan. Whether on weekdays or weekends, it is always bustling with visitors.
Menghuan Pond, located near Lengshuikeng in Yangmingshan, is a nationally designated wetland in Taiwan. Shortly after I began field recording, I came across this place while searching online and noticed that it was frequently mentioned. Later, I purchased and read Listening by the Pond by Taiwanese field recordist Laila Fan, and listening to the recordings included in the book further deepened my interest in Menghuan Pond.
Before I started field recording, my visits to Yangmingshan were purely for hiking. Even then, I was conscious of pausing to experience moments of natural stillness. However, once I began field recording and focused my attention entirely on listening, all kinds of human-made noise became impossible to ignore. For someone hoping to capture the pristine sounds of nature, this is an unsettling reality. It’s no surprise that anyone who takes natural soundscape recording seriously seems inevitably drawn toward environmental conservation.
Back to the main topic — this time, I chose to visit Menghuan Pond on the morning of Chinese New Year's Eve, hoping to minimize human-made disturbances during the recording.
Perhaps because it was winter, the frogs were not very active, and only occasional calls could be heard at Menghuan Pond. In the recording, there is one frog call coming from the right side at a relatively close distance. Additionally, the wind was quite strong that day, so wind noise was more prominent in the recording. My hope for fewer people also fell through — the number of visitors didn’t decrease despite it being Chinese New Year’s Eve. Conversations, car engines, and airplanes constantly entered the microphones’ pickup range. In the end, I recorded for about an hour before escaping back to Lengshuikeng to catch the bus down the mountain.
Location: 25.167091, 121.560599
2025年1月陽明山夢幻湖
陽明山是台灣的國家公園，也是熱門的觀光景點，不論平日假日，遊客總是絡繹不絕。
位於陽明山冷水坑附近的夢幻湖，是臺灣的國家級溼地。剛開始接觸田野錄音不久，查詢網路資料時發現這裡時常被提及。後來購買並閱讀了臺灣野地錄音師范欽慧的著作《在湖畔傾聽》，並實際聆聽書中收錄的錄音，更讓我對夢幻湖產生了濃厚的興趣。
以前沒有開始田野錄音時，到陽明山的目的僅是為了健行，雖然我會有意識的駐足於偶然的自然靜謐之中，然而開始田野錄音將注意力完全集中於聆聽時，各種人為的噪音便無所遁形，對於期待純粹大自然聲音的聽者而言，無疑是個震驚的事實。也無怪乎只要是認真看待自然音景錄音的人，似乎不可避免的成為關注環境保護的一份子。
回到正題，這次我選擇在除夕的上午前往夢幻湖錄音，希望可以將人為的干擾降到最低。
可能是冬季所以蛙並不活躍，夢幻湖只有零星的蛙叫聲。錄音中可以聽到來自右邊距離較近有一隻蛙叫，外加今天的風比較大，風噪聲比較顯著，而且我對人少的期待也落了空，遊客並沒有因為除夕而減少，聊天、汽車及飛機的噪音不斷地進入麥克風的收音範圍，最終我錄了1個小時左右就逃離似的回到冷水坑坐公車下山。