It is a quiet early morning in Rocky Mountain National Park. As hikers walk along the Upper Beaver Meadows Trail, artist Garrison Gerard stands by a nearby stream. He pulls out a small buoy-like microphone connected to a cable. He is holding what is known as a hydrophone.

“If we put it in there, it will hear every little noise,” he said.

He lowers the cable into the water and puts on his headphones. Instead of hearing the sound of the flowing water, the hydrophone picks up the vibrations. in the water. It sounds a bit like a xylophone and makes little “plink” sounds that start as small bubbles and get louder and deeper.

“If you move it over flowing water, it is — not be a cliché — like a symphony of sounds,” he said. “You can play like a whole piece just by moving and listening to the sounds of the different parts of the river.”

Rocky Mountain’s Artist-In-Residence program was on hold for seven years due to necessary repairs to the lodge and a change in leadership, but it’s back this summer.

Gerard was one of the six artists selected, but his “art” is different from a painting or a photograph. He records natural sounds from the earth and uses them in electronic or orchestral pieces.

To capture the sound, he conducts an acoustic survey. In theory, it’s very simple: he goes on a long hike and listens to what’s going on around him. He carries a variety of different microphones with him, from a buoy hydrophone to a geophone, a microphone with a spike on the end that he sticks into the ground to measure the vibrations of the earth.

“Our neighbors at the cabin probably think I’m crazy. They see this person with headphones on, tripping over rocks and stuff with wires,” he said. “It’s like they’re saying, ‘Can’t you just paint the landscape like all normal artists?'”

But his sound studies tell him a lot about the level of biodiversity in an area and how it has changed over time.

Scientists have used hydrophones to track the number of whales in the oceans. Another device called “Audio Moths” has allowed them to observe which birds are passing through an area and track which birds are in that area. The devices have also been used to solve crimes, for example to track poachers in the Amazon by gunshots.

Gerard isn’t looking for poachers. He’s focused on opportunities to “listen to the park” and find out how the landscape responds to things like the number of bellowing moose in a particular area.

He recently used a geophone to study how tourists change the sounds of the landscape. It sounds like people marching in the snow.

“We’re used to a footstep being pretty quiet, but you can hear how much noise it actually makes from the vibrations underground,” he said.

He wants more people to think about what they hear. After spending two weeks in the park, he made an important observation.

“It’s just so busy and there’s so much street noise,” he said. “Not that that’s a bad thing. People should come and enjoy it, but when you think about the impact it has on the noise level?”

Thanks to its scenic landscapes, unique biodiversity and proximity to Denver, Rocky Mountain National Park has been the fifth most visited national park in the United States over the past decade, receiving approximately four million visitors annually.

“It’s difficult to drive people out of this park,” said Tracy Coppola of the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA). “It’s a true crown jewel.”

While visitors enjoy the Rocky Mountains, they also leave a damaging footprint, with the park spending more than $200 million on repairs and upgrades. — more than any other national park in Colorado. The money will be used for trail maintenance, additional parking, and sewer improvements.

While park officials have found some solutions to handle the influx of visitors, such as a timed entry system, Coppola said it’s a difficult balancing act.

“We want these places to continue to be celebrated and accessible, but we also want to protect the park,” she said. “Park staff and morale were severely impacted by overcrowding because there were no longer those intense interactions with people that rangers were trained to provide.”

Yet artists have been painting and photographing these crown jewels for over 150 years and have even played a major role in protecting them.

“Artists like Thomas Moran and William Henry Jackson actually created works of art that inspired Washington, D.C. to establish parks like Yellowstone and other early national parks,” said Shari Orr, program manager of the Volunteers-In-Parks program at the National Park Service, which oversees the Artist-In-Residence program.

The relationship between artists and political leaders has continued over the years and led to the creation of artist-in-residence programs in 50 parks across the country.

Rocky Mountain’s program is one of the oldest, beginning in 1984. Selected artists stay in a cabin in the park for two weeks, hosting community programs, working on their art, and engaging with the public.

“We want to help people better understand the resources we protect, whether they are natural, cultural or historic, and we want them to gain personal meaning from them,” Orr said.

It doesn’t matter if the artist is sewing quilts, creating a comedy sketch or writing a cookbook, Orr said such creative mediums spread the message of environmental protection in a way that has more impact than reading a parking sign.

“You really go from being a visitor to being a steward of this resource and this special place,” she said. “(We hope) that they walk away hopefully better informed and maybe better people because of the reflections they’ve made.”

That’s what Joe Norman wants to do. He’s a steel sculptor from Loveland who was also selected for a residency.

Many of his works feature two images or words blended together, but different from each other when viewed from a certain angle. On one side, you might see the word “anger.” Move to the other side and you’ll see the word “hope.”

“If I had to sum it up (my art) in one word, it would be the word ‘and,'” he said. “I like the idea of ​​creating sculptures that have more than one thing in them, to say that this idea contains a spectrum.”

Like Gerard, Norman plans to use his stay to explore the role of wilderness and whether people are managing and interacting with it appropriately. He wants to talk to park rangers and visitors about how they interact with nature and whether they are grappling with the idea that humans are improving or destroying the landscape.

“I think that’s still a question. I’m not really sure we can,” he said. “I hope we can, but, you know, the jury’s still out.”

He wants to create a sculpture that will spark a discussion about nature conservation while the idea is still fresh — and within the park boundaries.

“Photographers are very good at transporting someone to a place they are no longer in,” he said. “I think I’m more interested in people asking questions about the place they are in while they are there and seeing the sculpture.”

Once he has created a work, there is no telling what effect it has had on people, but Norman knows it will serve an important purpose.

“You could sit down and read the script of The Godfatheror you can watch the movie The Godfatherand those are two completely different experiences,” he said. “If we want to discover our place in the world, just like we need writing, we need art. If we start to limit one of them, I don’t think we get the full picture of what we’re actually doing here.”

Back in the park, Gerard walks around with a microphone and headphones. Within a few minutes, he hears the rhythmic buzzing of bugs and new chirping sounds.

“It’s even more interesting than usual when I learn what kinds of birds and insects they are,” he said. “Even the plants – each plant makes a different sound when the wind blows through it.”

Gerard hopes his work will remind people of their impact on the soundscape and help them build a deeper connection with the park’s ecosystem.

“I think when we take the time to listen and hear what’s going on around us, it changes our attitude toward everything,” he said. “I think it helps us rethink that we’re part of this web where everything is connected.”

Norman is just finishing his residency and Garrison Gerard finished his a few weeks ago. Their work will be on view online or in the park next summer.

This story is part of a collaboration with Rocky Mountain PBS.