‘Sound Tracker’ Gordon Hempton ’76 is in print and on TV (beautifully)

He’s featured on one of those oversized “interesting-alumni” posters along the MAC Hall concourse leading to the library, and we’ve written about him in the university magazine. Gordon Hempton, Class of 1976, has won widespread acclaim as the Sound Tracker, making audio recordings of the world’s vanishing wilderness areas and their symphony of sounds. He’s often quite quiet (shhhhhhh) but we ran across him twice over the weekend. The first: His book One Square Inch of Silence: One Man’s Quest to Preserve Quiet was reviewed in Outdoor America, the magazine of the Izaak Walton League. (No link for non-members). The second: KOMO-TV of Seattle ran a beautiful sound/video package, six minutes in length, describing Hempton’s work. The piece has a melodramatic hook, too, in that at the time of his taping Hempton feared he was gradually losing all of his hearing. (Doctors now tell him he has a good chance of recovery.) See the KOMO-TV piece.