Listen "240 Wide time in the Kielder Forest (sleep safe with distant geese)"
Episode Synopsis
Last week we shared wide time captured from a North Norfolk beach as night fell. This week it's wide time from the vast interior of the Kielder Forest. Human-free night vastness is an experience so out of reach to us, and indeed to most people, that travelling with the Lento box to bring it back in the raw is always top of our list.
Kielder is a mostly uninhabited landscape made of hills, trees and water. It is England's largest fir plantation on the north east border with Scotland. You may remember we travelled there in May to find and capture new episodes. This section of time is from around 3am. The Lento box is recording alone laid against the trunk of a fir tree on the east side of the 9 mile long reservoir.
The sound landscape of Kielder at night is extremely spatial and delicate. Made up of subtle changing movements of air over miles of fir trees. Of occasional nocturnal flying geese. Of echoes, layered upon echoes. Of tiny twigs and branches shifting as the trees gradually droop their boughs in response to the night cool. But these sounds though precious are not of themselves what makes the experience of being immersed within the Kielder Forest so special. And they are not the main aural presence we left the Lento box out alone to witness.
What we wanted to capture from within Kielder above anything else, was the phenomenon of wide time. Wide time is not of itself audible. It's made of nothing. Or more accurately, emptiness. To gain a sense of wide time you have to allow yourself to mentally tune into it. And that takes time. And a quiet place to listen. And decent headphones or equivalent. And a long form spatial audio recording that comes directly from the natural emptiness of Kielder Forest at night. A place where wide time happens.
Kielder is a mostly uninhabited landscape made of hills, trees and water. It is England's largest fir plantation on the north east border with Scotland. You may remember we travelled there in May to find and capture new episodes. This section of time is from around 3am. The Lento box is recording alone laid against the trunk of a fir tree on the east side of the 9 mile long reservoir.
The sound landscape of Kielder at night is extremely spatial and delicate. Made up of subtle changing movements of air over miles of fir trees. Of occasional nocturnal flying geese. Of echoes, layered upon echoes. Of tiny twigs and branches shifting as the trees gradually droop their boughs in response to the night cool. But these sounds though precious are not of themselves what makes the experience of being immersed within the Kielder Forest so special. And they are not the main aural presence we left the Lento box out alone to witness.
What we wanted to capture from within Kielder above anything else, was the phenomenon of wide time. Wide time is not of itself audible. It's made of nothing. Or more accurately, emptiness. To gain a sense of wide time you have to allow yourself to mentally tune into it. And that takes time. And a quiet place to listen. And decent headphones or equivalent. And a long form spatial audio recording that comes directly from the natural emptiness of Kielder Forest at night. A place where wide time happens.
More episodes of the podcast Radio Lento podcast
284 The wind of Long Mynd
21/10/2025
283 Night trees of Boggle Hole (sleep safe)
10/10/2025
280 Pyrenees thunder above watery valley
04/09/2025
275 Dawn in an apple tree - Derbyshire hills
13/07/2025
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