Discover 'cheeseburger bird' and other audio delights on soundwalk through Weaselhead Flats

How often do you go for a walk and instead of tuning into a podcast or playlist you just listen to whatever is around you? 

Calgarians can embark on a stroll through Weaselhead Flats on Sunday and be challenged to do exactly that: actively and intentionally listen to the world.

It's called a soundwalk, and it will be hosted by New Works Calgary. Rebecca Bruton, the co-artistic director at the non-profit, says the concept started in Vancouver in the 1970s with the World Soundscape Project.

The project focused on sound as a part of ecology studies. Composer Hildegard Westerkamp — who worked on the research project with avant-garde musician R. Murray Schafer — has described the practice as the difference between hearing the world and listening to it.

• LISTEN | Soundwalk through Weaselhead Flats features 'cheeseburger' bird call:

"[The World Soundscape Project] really got the idea going ... that sound is an integral part of our environments," Burton said.

"If you have a flight path running over a marsh, it means frogs can't mate in that marsh because their calls are disrupted by the airplanes overhead. So, sound … has a lot of information to offer us."

The magic of being silent

Local musician, composer and teacher Kenna Burima will be the guide for Sunday's one-hour, 2.5 kilometre walk, and it's a fit that makes sense — she had already been going for daily strolls through the Weaselhead in silence.

"It was born out of the strong desire to be alone ... and as an artist attempting to create with a young person in tow," Burima said.

"It meant that I really had to search for places of solitude, and what I thought would be silence."

Instead, she said, it allowed her to connect with natural sound and her surroundings — and notice, for example, the call of a chickadee that Burima said sounds like a lilting, drawn-out "cheeeese-bur-ger."

"What ended up happening, I discovered, was that we're always going to hear some sort of something if we're paying attention — and the hard part is paying attention," Burima said.

"For this soundwalk, what I really want to be able to offer is the magic of being silent together."

An element of co-creation

Burima says it's a weird thing — to be in a group of people and to be quiet.

Burima plans to maybe draw the group's attention to different sounds she is already aware of, and has plotted out.

But she knows that while she can plan the route for days, weeks or months, what happens on the walk will occur organically.

"It's completely improvised because maybe there's not a plane flying overhead, maybe there's not dogs barking, maybe it's not windy," Burima said.

"There's just so many variables, I can't control anything, so there's an element of co-creation, I guess."

And according to Westerkamp, listening to the sound of the environment can be healing.

"To be in the present as a listener is a revolutionary act," she told CBC News in 2017.

"We absolutely need it, to be grounded in that way."

Registration is required for Sunday's soundwalk through Weaselhead Flats, and can be completed online.

With files from the Calgary Eyeopener.