“Well, hi there, friend!” a young boy says, his grasp on a southern accent a little loose. “Hi, friend!” Metal clangs and kids shout. “I was climbing up, and I couldn’t find a way, so I just jumped,” added another. He tacks on a little Ugandan Knuckles and an a capella rendition of Dinge Dinge Dinge a few seconds later. He screams.

The wind whistles. 

“What is he doing?” one of them asks the other. “Oh! He’s recording us! Well, hi friend!” 

They scream again.

For 20 seconds on May 7, 2026, Stewart Park sounded exactly like this; it will never sound exactly like this again, and if someone hadn’t been recording, no one would ever know what it sounded like to be in Stewart Park on May 7, 2026, on a windy day, packed with kids spouting off a reference to a meme a few times a minute. There are an infinite number of these moments, every day. Why don’t we preserve more of them?

Playhouse Arts aims to. From the beginning of May through August this year, the art agency is inviting visitors to five different parks around Arcata — Redwood, Larson, Stewart, Greenview, and the marsh — to take a 30-second to 10-minute audio recording of the park and send it in. The Playhouse is calling it the “Hear Here!” project. All of the recordings people send in are publicly accessible. 

Anyone desiring access to a library of sounds can do whatever they like with the recordings, Humboldt Hot Air director Neroli Devaney told the Outpost. They’re meant to be a public resource. She envisions ambient artists turning them into experimental music, into albums that incorporate the identity of a place into song. (She’s not super into that genre, but she grew up listening to it — her dad was a fan.) There are only a few submissions so far, but she’s optimistic that there will be more. 

The program is part of Playhouse Arts’ Outside Art project, a campaign that endeavors to entice people to check out parks around Arcata they may have never been to before. There are lots of little parks that don’t get a heavy amount of foot traffic. One of them, Mountain View Park, is basically just a spot of green lawn off of Haegar Avenue on the west end of town; in November, two people told stories in the park. In January, the Playhouse hosted an “exploration” of middle-of-winter light and dark in Shay Park. 

Directing people to these underutilized public spaces is a big focus of the program, Devaney said. Residents have “every right” to go and picnic in the park, lay down in the sun and enjoy themselves, she said, and they should know where they are and how best to enjoy them. Asking them to sit and listen and share a fraction of their experience benefits everyone. 

“It’s really grounding to pause and breathe,” Devaney said. “When you’re having a panic attack, you’re supposed to do that, right? Look around and count how many blue things you see — you know, count the number. I think it’s a really similar thing, where you’re like, ‘Okay, stop what you’re doing, and ground yourself in your surroundings,’ and I hope that people feel calmer and less anxious after they do it.”

Having a sound library of dozens of moments in time could be a valuable resource for historians and archivists as well, she said. Photos are cheap, often “mindless and quick,” Devaney said. Having a trove of sounds in addition to the countless images people snap every day adds a new layer. One person sent in a recording of sword fighting practice at Redwood Park; the clash of steel on steel, the wren’s cry in the background, would have been lost. 

Noise changes how people interact with the world. Hanging out at the D Street Linear Park is a way different experience than hanging out at Redwood Park, Devaney said; listening to highway drone instead of bird song can make someone feel totally different, but just paying attention to it makes a difference. 

“There’s something to be said for just closing your eyes and listening to a place,” Devaney said. “It’s a way to relate to a place in a way that isn’t visual. It’s an additional way to relate to a place, to understand a place. I am here, and this is what here means.”

On May 7, to be here in Stewart Park was to be serenaded by a child with the Labubu song for three seconds before another one lamented some unforeseen woe.

“I’m cooked,” he said. “I’m cooked, I’m cooked, I am COOKED!” 

Now we can listen to it, forever.