This episode of Flux (https://extra.resonance.fm/series/flux) examined distance, time, movement and place from replicated walks into the remote, coastal, Icelandic lava field of Búðahraun. A ‘there-and-back’ route was walked twice, once at dawn and once at dusk; distance is both the distance of the walk and distance heard across the lava field. As well as the elapsed time of the walks themselves, time is present as the time of day but also the time between the walks – the time of a day – and, as the walks occurred on the summer solstice, the time of the year. Movement comes directly from my footfall, my embodied movement across the rock, but also from the comings and goings of the birds as they, and their calls, songs, and displays move over the lava field. Together these elements contribute to a sonic portrait of a place but they also create a space to allow a listener to hear a place of their own. 

Búðahraun

I start at the back of the wooden church. In the evening light, a family wanders the graveyard but at dawn I am alone. Along the narrow path the back-of-the-beach grass transitions into the ridges, fissures and clefts of the Búðahraun lava field. Marram grass yields to rock – lichen crusted, rounded with moss – a surface razed of vegetation of any meaningful height.
 
from across black lava
I hear fluty chatter,
song of redwings.
 
I step, stride, walk the path
to the solstice turn
dusk to dawn, dawn to dusk