Gentle Nature, a preview.

Why it works

Nature runs on timescales that make a bad day look small. A glacier takes a thousand years over a valley. A redwood spends a century on what will later count as its youth. The stories in this group follow one such process from start to finish, and the green noise here is their natural background.

The voice in this preview is the site's one sample, the opening of Aristotle, from Ancient Worlds. The nature stories are read the same way: slowly, evenly, and with the ending given first. They are listed below. Each has its first minute written out, so you can read one before you hear it.

What you are hearing

• Green noise. Pink noise passed through a wide band centred on 500 Hz. The lows and the hiss are both turned down, leaving the middle, where most outdoor sound lives.
• The voice. The first four minutes of Aristotle, the Greatest Philosopher, a Lullable story, in a synthesised voice. It only plays if you bring it in.
• The ending. The preview lasts four minutes. Its last ten seconds are a straight fade to silence, so it never stops abruptly.

Gentle Nature stories in the app

• The First Ice Age on Earth, 53 minutes. Long before plants or animals, tiny microbes changed the air and the Earth grew cold for the first time. Drift back from a Canadian lakeshore to icebergs on a silent sea.
• A Winter Night at the Bottom of the World, 54 minutes. The sun sets once a year at the South Pole, and the stars simply circle. Spend one long, quiet night in a warm station, under the whole slow sky.
• A Night in a Temperate Forest, 54 minutes. For a mind still humming at day's end. The forest asks nothing of you tonight but to walk slowly and notice small, quiet things.
• The Whole Life of the Earth, in One Night, 50 minutes. The whole history of the planet, told as one slow night. Oceans fill, ice comes and goes, forests rise, and people arrive just before dawn.
• What We Know About Dreams, 49 minutes. Darting eyes on a paper chart, a rat replaying its maze, a song that arrived in the night. A gentle tour of dreams, just before your own begin.
• The Midnight Museum Beneath the Sea, 20 minutes. The ocean arranged as a museum with its light on floors: gold at the foyer, cathedral blue in the middle, and a midnight gallery that lights itself.
• The Slow Life of a Redwood, 41 minutes. A coastal grove at dusk, a tree older than the cathedrals, and one unbroken thread of water travelling from the roots to the highest needle.
• The Bay That Glows at Night, 44 minutes. No moon tonight, and that is the point. The paddle rests, the water glows wherever the fish go, and a whole island keeps its darkness like a garden.

For a real recording that runs forty minutes, the Lullable iPhone app has rain, waves, a campfire and plain noise, with no voice and no music.