SEDONA, Ariz — Bhadra Ruttiger is a hunter.
Growing up in a mountain village in Bavaria, Germany he would head to a creek near his house and hunt for trout alone. Sometimes it would take all afternoon and he’d only catch one, but it was worth it to escape into nature and enjoy the peace it brought him.
Now, living in Sedona, his hunts continue, but not for trout.
Ruttiger creates ambient sound YouTube videos for his channel Living Art. And he looks for sounds that showcase Arizona’s natural world that will sooth and relax listeners.
“When I go out with the camera and it’s a beautiful day and the light is incredible, which we have a lot of in Sedona, you never know what you’ll find and what you’ll get. It reminds me of that same feeling I had when I was a child going out hunting,” said Ruttiger.
Ruttiger’s quest for all things soothing and meditative has been more than 30 years in the making and has sent him to all corners of the world, including to India for 15 years. He’s found that he finds peace especially in nature.
“Growing up [in Germany] was very cathartic, but I just wanted to get out to somewhere else. Which I did. As soon as I was 17 or 18, I left, which I never regretted even though it’s a very beautiful town and there was a very beautiful landscape around it,” said Ruttiger.
After crisscrossing the globe, Ruttiger settled in Sedona where he’s worked as a message therapist for more than 25 years. But when the coronavirus pandemic sidelined him from his day job, he turned his focus more on making ambient videos for YouTube which had been more of a hobby for him up until that point.
“When I started YouTube, I made videos of my little dogs. And then I would travel around and make little videos of that. It slowly evolved out of making a road trip video of certain places, certain waterfalls to stopping there and making one of that [waterfall],” Ruttiger said.
Since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, he’s seen an uptick in engagement with his channel, a lot of his videos have thousands of views. It’s something he attributes to boredom and people having more time to kill, but also a need to find something relaxing to help people through a time of chaos and uncertainty.
“If you have a nice sound in the background you start to become receptive to the sound coming in and that is something deeply relaxing. It brings you back to yourself and for that it’s very helpful,” said Ruttiger.
One of Ruttiger’s favorite spots in Sedona is Crescent Moon Ranch, which was one of his inspirations for creating ambient content on YouTube. Crescent Moon Ranch is a park where you can hike along a river that leads to a waterfall and allows for peaceful meditation in nature.
“The sounds are just incredible because it’s silent, you just hear the waterfall and sometimes the birds are singing. It’s just beautiful,” said Ruttiger.
But finding those beautiful sounds can be as elusive as catching the trout from his youth. Sound pollution in Sedona is increasing and it leaves him with short pieces of sound to put together for his videos that can be hours long sometimes.
“We have quite some sound pollution in Sedona. A plane comes and another airplane comes, and you have to wait until another moment of silence,” Ruttiger said.
However, there is a spot by the river that sticks out for Ruttiger as unique to Sedona because of how many birds flock to it and the amount of singing they do.
“I know being here in Sedona, especially at that place, it’s not like when you go into the mountains where you hear birds in the background. It seems almost joyous when they’re singing,” said Ruttiger.
For more on Ruttiger’s video making process and the challenges of hunting for the perfect sounds watch his interview here:
To watch his soothing, ambient videos head here.
