Mt. Tabor Rain Soundwalk

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When I first heard a radio piece about Mt. Tabor Park being awarded America’s first Urban Quiet Park I have to admit I was incredulous. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for it, but of all the parks I visit to make field recordings in the Portland area, this one might be the most frustrating. That is, if you’re hoping to get away from anthropogenic sounds—people and their machines.

It was just last October that I introduced you to Mt. Tabor (if you weren’t already acquainted.)

I described it as a “island of green in a patchwork of grey.” And so it is: all 176 acres of it. The deal with mountains, though, is they only give the listener more acoustic vantage as you venture further up and in. There are few folds in the park’s contours, so getting out of earshot of boulevards pulsing with machine energy and airplanes raining down sound waves on approach to PDX, just 5 miles to the north, is nearly impossible. It’s also a well-loved, well-used park. Runners and cyclists breathe heavy scaling its slopes. People talk. On phones. It is not packed on a weekday, but it sure isn’t lonely either. All this sound energy is not a bad thing, don’t get me wrong, but why the first urban quiet park in the US? This is an exemplar?

It’s all about framing isn’t it? I mean yeah, you walk up the mountain and there’s downtown looking like a diorama set against the green West Hills. It looks quiet. It seems quiet. Quiet is so slippery, so subjective.

Maybe it’s the signal-to-noise ratio of the near field soundscape—of being able to key in on small sounds because the background noise is just a wash—that lends itself to the perception of quiet. When you can hear little birds, with their little bird-whisper sounds.

Or rain. Yes, rain with its crowd-suppressing effect; it makes the park seem quieter. Rain and wind in the trees masks the city din. Like passing through a veil, moving through the rain can feel transportive. It sounds a sizzle on the reservoirs, a diffused and hushed drum circle played on millions of leaves.

But still, the first quiet urban park in the whole of the USA? I love the sentiment, but the logic seemed imprecise. Unearned, even.

And then a few weeks ago, on a Wednesday, I went up there for a walk. Something was different. The gate to one of several lanes leading to one of several parking areas was locked shut. “Park Closed to Vehicles on Wednesday” a sign read. I don’t remember this. Is this new?

Then a thought occurred to me: maybe this is why it’s the first urban quiet park. Maybe it is earned. After all, cordoning off whole interior parking lots, even one day a week is sure to rankle some folks. This is what intention looks like, I thought. This is a place that, at least on Wednesdays, sounds different. Measurably quieter. It came with a cost. People can’t vroom in and out. They have to enter from the perimeter and use good old-fashioned human power to move through it.

Mt. Tabor Park, I’m sorry I ever doubted you.

But how long has this been going on? A while, it seems. According to a 2013 article, which references the closure policy, it’s been well over a decade; so long even the internet doesn’t know.

I love it when the internet—and AI, when it’s not hallucinating— doesn’t know something. That’s when I let my fingers do the walking through the maze of research tools the Multnomah County Library provides: not quite microfiche, but as close to it as digital gets.

Could the policy go back to the 1980’s? Conceivably. In a bulletin of Matters to be Considered by City Council, the Apr. 6, 1981 Oregonian references “an ordinance authorizing Parks to install 5 traffic control gates in Mt. Tabor Park” up for consideration. I found no events programmed for the park on a Wednesday thereafter, save for Audubon bird walks embarking from a perimeter entrance in 2006.

If it goes back that far, what really motivated no-vehicle-Wednesdays? Was a day of peace and quiet? Wilderness-in-the-city-Wednesdays? I’d like to think so.

On several spring and summer Wednesday nights, however the quiet park is jolted to life. Established in 2020, Mount Tabor Dance Community (aka MTDC or Tabor Dance) saw another role that the closure policy could lend itself to in summertime: Insulating their outdoor music-fueled events from the dense neighborhoods of SE Portland, while also minimizing potential conflicts of park users. Tracing its roots to the pandemic and dancing in chalk circles drawn for distancing, the event grew over the years to draw crowds in the hundreds. Last spring and summer MTDC started again at Mt. Tabor, then hopped around to at least five other Portland parks, making good on the motto “Portland is our dance floor.”

My score for Mt. Tabor Rain Soundwalk is very gauzy: mostly languorous synth pads and drones. Electric piano only enters the instrumentation in the final third of the recording. That’s my favorite moment; a tender melody receding into the blue-grey distance.

Thanks, my friends, for reading and listening. Mt. Tabor Rain Soundwalk is available on all music streaming services on January 16th, 2026.