In passing

In Bernie Krause's latest book, The Great Animal Orchestra, he tells the story of a trip that he took to Lake Wallowa in Oregon in 1971, where a Nez Perce elder offered him a music lesson. The two walked to a stream on on a fall morning, and Krause was told to crouch by the water, and to remain silent. As he stood still, he writes, he gradually noticed a wondrous "combination of tones, sighs, and midrange groans... a cross between a church organ and a colossal pan flute" - a hybrid of noises generated, it turned out, by the sound of wind blowing across a stand of reeds. And then the elder spoke. "Now you know where we got our music. And that's where you got yours, too."

And today Cleo, standing above the Mount Royal station tracks, got her music from a 50-hopper train carrying coal to points north.