Polyglot Open Space Tour: California Coastal Trail at Wavecrest

Explore the Polyglot Open Space Tour: California Coastal Trail at Wavecrest

The Polyglot Open Space Tour is a place-based exploration of Wavecrest Open Space, a coastal preserve on the edge of Half Moon Bay, California.

This project began with a simple question: How many ways can a place speak? My title references Bruce Albert's "The polyglot forest," in which Albert describes the forest not as a singular voice but as a cacophony of languages, resonances, and ecological identities. The title "Polyglot Open Space Tour" also honors the Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST), which purchased the land in 2008 to protect its wetlands and coastal prairies from contentious local politics and impending residential development.

The inspiration to explore Wavecrest's polyglot acoustics began with its reputation for biodiversity.

The cypress windrows and coastal chaparral offer a layered conversation between birds, shoreline, weather, humans, and the dogs who enjoy this space. For those willing to quiet themselves long enough to listen, the land speaks to us through its ecoacoustics.

The Peninsula Open Space Trust – Wavecrest, Blufftop Coastal Park and Poplar Beach birdsong audio libraries by eBird also inspired this sound mapping project. Developed and run by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, eBird is a global platform where birdwatchers review regional species data and contribute their own photos and audio recordings tied to specific birding "hotspots," thereby participating in a worldwide biodiversity study.

To me, eBird also acts as a sort of poetic ledger, revealing why Wavecrest—and open spaces like it—deserve both protection and recognition for their biodiverse habitats and wildlife corridors, as well as their recreational value. The Wavecrest eBird archive became the "third leg" of inspiration for the Polyglot Open Space Tour, which expands beyond the birdsong to include a cohesive acoustic identity of the landscape.

In developing the interactive interface, the Monarch Waystation Soundmap by Alejandro Botilo gave me a valuable framework to understand my end vision. In time, I look forward to adding experiential sound pieces like those featured on Botijo's Soundmap, which layer multiple field recordings and musical performances captured within a given proximity along the Western Monarch's migratory routes.

I curated a "starter pack" of audio clips from my archive of video files and some recent field recordings from my visits to Wavecrest. Through this project, I aim to collect samples of Wavecrest's overarching acoustic experience within a mapped geotagging interface, allowing me and my fellow ecoacoustic explorers to curate and remix hyper-local sound samples into artistic expressions of soundscape ecology. As the project grows, I like the idea of developing soundscapes that can follow an intended path of travel, remixing and playing in sequence as the user navigates the trails.

This map is meant to grow.

I welcome visitors to contribute their own recordings and points of interest to the project, capturing a specific sound, photo, or moment that speaks to this place's identity and our collective experience of Wavecrest.

Submit an entry here.

This will allow the map, as a whole, to iterate into a shared acoustic archive, eventually reflecting our shared appreciation for Wavecrest and the access to nature that it provides. Artistic Remix audio submissions—those that have been layered and/or inspired by a spot at Wavecrest or Blufftop Park—are also welcome and encouraged!

This project was created using uMap (OpenStreetMap) and is part of an emerging exploration of creative cartography, place-based storytelling, and soundscape ecology.