It’s wildflower time again, and that means it’s time to send us your applications for The Trillium Project. This year’s program will run from April 17 to May 21.

The Trillium Project is our open, place-based, revolving residency program at the Cabin at Shotpouch Creek. You are invited to submit a brief proposal—singly, in pairs, or in small groups—to spend 1 to 3 days at the Cabin to explore the land and create visual art, creative writing, scientific observations, music, or other works that emerge from your engagement with the Shotpouch land. Our vision for the Project is that people will come and go from the Cabin, exploring the creek, meadows, and upland forests, encountering new people and new ideas as they go about their explorations. Our hope is that as people find inspiration and information in this special place, they will also create passing collaborations with others, share their perspectives and expertise, and learn to see the land through a variety of eyes.

Trillium Project proposals are due by Monday, April 10, 2017.  We review applications as we receive them, so we encourage you to apply early.

Click here for more information about the Trillium Project including a link to our On-line Submission Form.

Saturday, February 25, 6:30 pm
Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Corvallis, 2945 NW Circle Blvd.

On October 11, five climate activists shook the North American energy industry by closing the emergency shut off valves on all five pipelines bringing Canadian tar sands oil into the US. It was an unprecedented act of non-violent direct action that shut down 15% of US crude oil imports for nearly a day.

Now, the “Valve Turners” face felony charges with sentences of up to 90 years in prison and hundreds of thousand of dollars in fines and legal fees. Hear Emily, Michael, Annette, Leonard, and Ken discuss why they felt morally compelled to take this action and risk their freedom.

Former Corvallis resident and 350Corvallis member, Leonard Higgins was one of these brave individuals and will speak at this event along with the other 4 valve turners. Ken Ward willl also reflect on his recent trial and the testimony that led to a hung jury.

The valve turners will be interviewed by Kathleen Dean Moore, Corvallis philosopher, environmental advocate, and writer.

These climate heroes need our support as they argue the necessity of their actions in court. This event will be a fundraiser for their legal fees. Suggested donation $20, but no one will be turned away for lack of funds.

Read more about the valve turners here:

http://sandiego350.org/blog/2017/02/17/over-100-people-celebrate-valve-turners-climate-direct-action-event-in-san-diego/#more-7834

 

Activists Who Closed the Emergency Shutoff Valves on Tar Sands Pipelines: “This Is an Emergency”

In anticipation for scholar-activist Naomi Klein’s upcoming speaking event on April 5 at the LaSells Stewart Center, the Spring Creek Project is hosting a series of discussions on Klein’s most recent book This Changes Everything: Capitalism versus the Climate. We will be meeting at the Multicultural Literacy Center on three Wednesday evenings: Wednesday, Februrary 15, March 1, and March 15, 6:00pm

Please join us for what is sure to be a stimulating conversation on the prospects for changing humanity’s current relationship with the environment, and charting out a better pathway forward from the current trends of a deepening climate crisis.

Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/1863730593882443/

about Naomi Klein’s “This Changes Everything Capitalism vs. the Climate” 

Forget everything you think you know about global warming. The really inconvenient truth is that it’s not about carbon—it’s about capitalism. The convenient truth is that we can seize this existential crisis to transform our failed system and build something radically better. In her most provocative talk yet, Naomi Klein tackles the most profound threat humanity has ever faced: the war our economic model is waging against life on earth.

We have been told the market will save us, when in fact the addiction to profit and growth is digging us in deeper every day. We have been told it’s impossible to get off fossil fuels when in fact we know exactly how to do it—it just requires breaking every rule in the “free-market” playbook. We have also been told that humanity is too greedy and selfish to rise to this challenge. In fact, all around the world, the fight back is already succeeding in ways both surprising and inspiring. Climate change, Klein argues, is a civilizational wake-up call, a powerful message delivered in the language of fires, floods, storms, and droughts. Confronting it is no longer about changing the light bulbs. It’s about changing the world—before the world changes so drastically that no one is safe. Either we leap—or we sink.

The Spring Creek Project invites submissions of creative writing to accompany the exhibit, “Microbiomes: To See the Unseen,” to be held from April 13 – May 27, 2017 at the Corvallis Arts Center.

We invite submissions of flash fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction that engage with the exhibit’s theme. Up to five selected works will be included in the Exhibition Catalog along with the exhibit’s visual art entries. If there are sufficient high-quality pieces, a chapbook of selected writings may be published by the Spring Creek Project.

The Microbiome Art Project is an art and science collaboration that focuses on microbial systems that affect human health, biodiversity of animal species, and air, earth and water quality. This exhibition asks both artists and researchers, “How can we see the unseen?” Microbiology tries to measure, visualize and understand complex microscopic systems in the same way artists seek understanding for life’s many questions. Through this exhibit, the arts will document and interpret complex research concepts, bring greater understanding for artists and the public, and offer a unique perspective to the scientific community.

 To inspire your writing, you can find links to examples of existing science-art collaborations here: Microbiome Websites.

“Microbiomes: To See the Unseen” is presented by The Corvallis Arts Center, in collaboration with the OSU Department of Microbiology;  SPARK: The Year of Arts and Sciences, and the Spring Creek Project.

Guidelines: 

Please limit your submission to:

• Prose: 500 words
• Poetry: 40 lines

Please do not include any visual images.

How to Submit: Beginning October 17, submit your writings to our Submittable page. The deadline is December 1. As these pieces will be read blind, please remove your name from your submission. Multiple submissions not accepted.

Scientist and artists work and think in different ways, but the process of inquiry has many common dimensions as well. How do art-science convergences happen? Why are they important or useful? What are some future prospects for art-science convergences?

Our panel last week, “Mormons, Militias, and Malheur,” was full of fascinating insights on the  religious backgrounds and legal beliefs of militia members occupying the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge and the history of public lands ranching. Though the situation at Malheur took a dramatic turn on this week with the arrest of leaders of the occupation, militia activity in the Pacific Northwest is not going away any time soon. These presentations provide some deep context for this ongoing issue.

 

Here are links to the videos of those panel presentations:
Part 1: “Malheur: Nature, Native Americans, and the Public”, Charles Goodrich, poet and the Director of the Spring Creek Project,
Part 2: “Ranching and Federal Lands“, Hannah Gosnell, Associate Professor of Geography in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences,
Part 3: “Militias, Republicanism, and the County Supremacy Movement”, Steve Shay, Adjunct Professor of History,
Part 4: “Worldviews and Religious Background of Malheur Militiamen”, Courtney Campbell, Professor of Philosophy and the Hundere Chair for Religion and Culture,

 

Wild in the Willamette is a literary compendium and guidebook to natural areas in the mid-Willamette Valley. The goal of the book is to introduce readers to those areas of the mid-Willamette Valley that may be new to them, through enticing trail descriptions, engaging essays by noted authors, and clear maps. Wild in the Willamette is being published by OSU Press, with a release date of Fall, 2015. All proceeds from the publication will be directed to Greenbelt Land Trust, a conservation organization working on protecting the mid-Valley’s natural areas, rivers, wildlife, and trails.

Interview by Jessica McDonald with Wild in the Willamette editor Lorraine Anderson:

(JM) Lorraine sits across from me outdoors at the downtown Beanery. It’s the tail-end of the summer, and the air hints at the prospect of rain after the arid summer. With the Beanery only steps from the Greenbelt Land Trust office, we are accustomed to the mix of retired professors, philosophers, farmers, and grad students that frequent the coffee shop – that eclectic mix that represents Corvallis so well. At the outdoor metal table Lorraine (with an ever-present book by her side) and I reminisce over the last three years that have brought us to where we are with the Wild in the Willamette project.

“It seems like just yesterday when I first met you. For months our steering committee of five had been running our wheels at making contacts with writers in watersheds, assigning hikes, outlining funding proposals, and pitching the project to OSU Press. I think we pretty quickly realized that we were in over our heads as volunteers. In order for this book to be successful we knew we needed an editor to guide the ship, and from the first time we sat down with you in May, 2012, it felt like a burden was being lifted!”

(LA) “I remember Charles Goodrich contacting me, saying that a group was ‘dreaming of a book’, and would I be interested in being involved. I said ‘Heck yes!’”

(JM) “This is a pretty unique book. One, because of the steering committee involvement, and the other because of the nature of a trail guidebook mixed with prose. This must have been fairly different than most of your other projects.”

(LA) “It was a great joy working with a group who were creating something of value. It never ceases to amaze me what a small group of people with a vision can do.

When I first started on this project I reached out to MJ Cody in Portland, who had worked on Wild in the City. I learned from MJ that one of the hardest puzzles to solve with the book was figuring out how to delineate the workload and how long something like this would take. How do I budget my time when there are dozens of sites, authors, maps, artwork? With all of these disparate voices, I really wanted the book to have one overarching voice, created through the editorial process.

One of the benefits of the steering committee was that thought had already been put into a template for different site descriptions. Trish Daniels (steering committee) really made the initial work easier, because she had created a template of the Pudding Creek watershed sites before I ever came on board with the project. It’s so helpful to have a rough template to refine, rather than starting from scratch, and Trish was a pioneer in creating those first steps of the actual book. Luckily, we also had Wild in the City as a starting point to consider.”

(JM) “It seemed like every meeting we had over the next few years you reported on a new trail that you had hiked as research for the book. That must have been an interesting side-project, actually getting on-the-ground and walking these routes.”

(LA) “When I started this project I pretty much knew that the next three years or so were really going to take me into the outdoors. I’ve been a hiker all of my life, so it was a natural thing to spend time doing, but this book has really enabled me to visit places I otherwise might never have known about.

One of the first things I did was on-the-ground research, which helped us to settle on what sites we were going to include, before then reaching out to writers and volunteers to help us write up each location. What a blast that ground-truthing was! Over three years I’ve gone to nearly every site in the book (Abby took on the task of checking out those outings I didn’t have time to do), and it’s really opened my eyes to the diversity of the mid-Willamette. The breadth of places within a two-hour radius of Corvallis is truly impressive.

Also, because we took a watershed approach to the book, I learned so much about the differences between the Coast and the Cascade sides of the valley. They really are so very different, and it provided me with an education in place that I might never have known otherwise. Another profound aspect of this book was discovering how much salmon is a constant thread running throughout . . .  how we have made our rivers nearly inhospitable to salmon over the last two hundred years, and also how that is being righted through restoration now.”

(JM) “Well, I’ve got to ask … any favorite, or for that matter least favorite hikes that you’ve discovered?” I watch as Lorraine smiles coyly.

(LA) “My favorite hiking trail in the book? I almost don’t want to give it away! What I will say is that I’m a swimming-hole connoisseur, and through this book I’ve found my new favorite swimming spot. Now … readers of this blog will just have to read the book to figure out the site I’m talking about!

Some of my most memorable hikes include Shelter Creek Falls – memorable for its 17 miles of gravel logging roads, creating a daunting drive. This book also provides some of the first guidebook direction to Crabtree Valley, an almost mythic place and so worth the long drive to see the 800-year-old trees.

One of the sites that didn’t make the book was Tumble Creek. A volunteer wrote a great description of it, but when I went out to find the trailhead, I said “Nope!” I recall driving a logging road barely hanging onto the side of a cliff in my Dodge Neon. When I reached a washout that had been patched with gravel, I declined to go any further.

(JM) “As I read through the book, I am amazed at how many people were involved. From the people who wrote up hike descriptions, to professional writers, artists, a cartographer, funders – it is truly impressive how many voices went into this book.”

(LA) “The volunteer writers were absolutely amazing. This book has created a network of people who care deeply about this place. Another incredible thing is that the vast majority came through, and on time! It’s actually one of the things I would change in the future – I’d have staggered due dates for writers on a project like this. While it was fantastic that writers met the deadline, it was a bit overwhelming to get a deluge of writing on one day!

This project was also a fun excuse to contact some of the professional writers that I didn’t already have relationships with. People like Laura McMasters or Henry Hughes – this provided a great opportunity to meet them. We are really fortunate to have so many writers within the Willamette Valley, and Wild in the Willamette brings so many of them together into one place for everyone to enjoy. The quality of writing in this book is really impressive.

And let’s not forget Monica Drost, map maker extraordinaire! We were so fortunate to work with Monica on the maps. Talk about coincidences … as the story goes, Monica first learned of the book project while in yoga class from overhearing two steering committee members talking. She then answered a call for writers to help write up a paddle trip. Unlike most of the other writers, when Monica handed in her write-up, she also submitted a map. “Aha!” I thought. I emailed asking her if she ‘knew anyone at OSU who could draw maps’ and explaining our need to contract out the maps for the book. Well, I had my fingers crossed that she would say ‘I know someone … me!’, and that’s exactly what happened.”

(JM) When we first sat down for coffee and I started to talk about the book’s initial impetus, Lorraine had stopped me, saying ‘What I really want to say is that, after three years, I’ve come to a realization about what this book is all about. Let’s start from the beginning, but it’s an important insight, and one that I feel has really come to light over time.’ Well, after an hour of lattes and conversation, I was ready for the big reveal.

“So, Lorraine – what is Wild in the Willamette about?”

(LA) Wild in the Willamette is a snapshot of how one particular people relate to one particular place at one particular time.

This book is like a living artifact. Right now, in this age, this guidebook is how people relate to place. We can read about a place like the South Santiam or Jackson-Frazier Wetlands, and on weekends we can get into cars and go see these beautiful places. Maybe in the future people will have a stronger or weaker bond to the land. I tend to think it will be weaker, as future generations become more and more wired to live indoors. In 100 years we might just look at a large screen showing a waterfall, instead of feeling the need to see it firsthand. But for now, we are a people who seek out these places. At this point in time, this is our consciousness.

I also think of the book as weaving together the creative responses of a bunch of people who inhabit this one place. Wild in the Willamette is a deep map of our place on earth.

(JM) “That makes perfect sense. This book is weaving together people by this one place, and it is also weaving together all of these places that make of the mid-Valley – from mountain tops to hidden nooks and crannies of Valleys and quiet rivers. I look forward to the reader picking up Wild in the Willamette and taking one small trip to see a new trail. It might be three miles or 30 from their front door, but each and every step into nature brings a greater appreciation for this place we call home.”

And with that, Lorraine and I stand, empty our coffee cups, and venture off to plant winter gardens and pick the last of the pears and apples before the wind and rain get the better of them. We will meet soon, for launch parties and readings of Wild in the Willamette – those well-earned celebrations for a beloved book years in the making.

———–

Lorraine Anderson is a freelance writer and editor with a special interest in connecting people with nature, has lived in the Willamette Valley since 2005. She edited Sisters of the Earth: Women’s Prose and Poetry about Nature and Earth and Eros: A Celebration in Words and Photographs; co-edited Literature and the Environment: A Reader on Nature and Culture and At Home on This Earth: Two Centuries of U.S. Women’s Nature Writing; and co-authored Cooking with Sunshine.

Jessica McDonald is development director for Greenbelt Land Trust, and has been a member of the Wild in the Willamette steering committee since its inception. More info: www.greenbeltlandtrust.org

(Melissa Hart will read Saturday, February 21, 7:30 at the Corvallis-Benton County Library. We asked her is she would share an excerpt from her new book, Wild Within: How Rescuing Owls Inspired a Family).  

Jonathan and I ate dinner at home and replaced evenings at the cinema with visits to the raptor center so that he could help to train one of the Northern spotted owls, Chenoa.

“Visitors connect better with the birds when they see them outside the mews,” he told me, “and we want them to see the spotteds, in particular, since they’re endangered.”

While he trained I helped out with another shift’s feeding and cleaning and sat outside the great-horned owl’s mew, wondering what it would feel like to walk around with her on my arm. She sat on her perch and triangulated at me, feather tufts poised like my tabby cat’s ears. Once, she opened her beak wide and hacked up a large gray pellet.

“For me?” I laughed. “Oh, you shouldn’t have.”

Jonathan walked down from Chenoa’s mew and kneaded my shoulders. “You’re so in love. Just ask if you can work with her. She’s not gonna hurt you.”

I thought of encephalitis, of wheelchairs, and shook my head.

We left Lorax fixating on the rubber duck in her water trough and walked back up the path to the clinic.

“Careful!” Jean held up a warning hand as we opened the door. “Loose bird!”

Occasionally, volunteers allowed one of the smaller permanent residents to stretch its wings in the clinic. I expected the one-eyed kestrel on the paper-towel holder or a screech owl on the computer monitor. Instead, I looked down to find—mounted on a portable ground perch—a foot-high owl with a round, tuftless head and bright white feathers speckled with black spots. He looked like a cue ball with a beak.

“Kids, meet Archimedes.” Jean stretched her gloved hand toward the bird, poised to grab him if he spooked. The creature’s enormous feathered feet remained gripping the wood-and-Astroturf block.

I remained by the door. “Named for the Greek mathematician? Um . . . his talons are twice as big as Lorax’s.”

“A snowy owl?” Jonathan’s brow shot up. “Is he permanent? How’d we get him?”

Our center had a policy of taking in resident birds native to Oregon. Even I, thanks to our Audubon book at home, knew that the big white owls lived mainly in Canada, Alaska, and Eurasia.

Jean ran a hand through her auburn hair. “Snowies are a gray area. They come down to the lower forty-eight every three or four years to hunt when the lemming population in the Arctic dries up. This guy’s an imprint, though, part of a captive breeding program back east. They couldn’t find a female for him . . .”

“So we got him.” Jonathan bent down to get a closer look. Archimedes clacked his black beak but remained standing on the perch.

I stood silent, staring. At a center where birds came in varying shades of black and tan and brown and white, and sometimes dull red, I’d never seen such an owl. He seemed to glow, lit from within. And he appeared to have a mustache—fluffy feathers cascaded from either side of his beak. He squinted up at me out of slanted yellow eyes that looked too small in his fluffy head and peered at my footwear, a pair of new white running shoes.

Suddenly, he opened his beak and emitted a sound like squeaking bicycle brakes. He scuttled over and jumped on top of my sneakers, spread his vast wings and let out a series of dog-like woofs.

Black talons squeezed my toes. I fought the urge to shriek.

“Jonathan. What . . . what’s he doing?”

Jean knelt and reeled in the nylon leash clipped to the leather jesses around the bird’s ankles. Archimedes stepped panting onto her gloved wrist. “Remember, he’s a human imprint.”

“So why’d he jump on my feet?” I wailed.

Jean grinned at me. “Darlin’, he’s trying to have sex with your shoes.”

“Oh . . . that’s disgusting.”

She laughed, flushed with excitement over the bird. “Harry Potter’s made snowies a big deal. This owl’s gonna be a rock star.”

Jonathan nodded, and I saw a look of longing in his eyes. “So . . . who’s training him?”

“The director’s asked me to work with him. He might’ve been trained at some point—hard to tell. For a while it’ll be just him and me. Then, if I can get him solid on the glove, we can share. Better put him back in his mew now.”

She touched her glove to Archimedes’ legs and he stepped up, but as she took his jesses and stood, he leaped off her arm and hung upside down, twisting and writhing at the end of his straps.

Piercing shrieks filled the clinic. From the treatment room a recovering kestrel screamed. Jean sank to the linoleum, abruptly mournful.

“Here we go again.” She put her free hand on the owl’s smooth white back and guided him—still screaming—to the ground, untangling the jesses from his huge, struggling feet. “If he used to be glove-trained, he isn’t now.”

“How come he doesn’t fly back to your arm like the other birds?” I asked. If a UPS truck rumbled up the driveway while Jonathan stood with Chenoa on the lawn, the spotted would sometimes fly off the glove in a defensive move called a bate. But if Jonathan stood immobile with his arm out, Chenoa flew right back to his glove.

“Snowies are ground nesters,” Jean explained. “If they get scared, they fly downward toward what they think is a safe spot and end up hanging. It’s not safe . . . he could asphyxiate and die.”

She put him in one of the clinic mews and unclipped his jesses, pausing to prod gently around his keel for undigested food.

“What’s he feel like?”

“Like putting your hand inside a down comforter. Want to touch him?”

“No, thanks.” I took a bag of mice from the freezer and set them in the sink to thaw for the nocturnal birds’ dinner. Their brown forms bobbed about in the warm water, thirty tiny, macabre swimmers.

“I’m off to work with Amazon.” Jonathan set a rat on a pie pan and headed up to the golden eagle’s mew.

I began to wash plates and syringes and coffee mugs. Jean spoke over the running water. “I really think,” she said in her meditative drawl, “that you’d make a good bird handler. What d’you say? My offer’s still good—I could teach you to work with Lorax, and maybe someday you could help with Archimedes.”

I turned off the water. The new owl looked like a droll little snowman, albeit a snowman with a foot fetish. Though I knew better, I suspected him of a damned good sense of humor.

“Maybe,” I allowed.

She handed Archimedes a mouse. He took it in his obsidian beak and held it a moment before throwing his head back and swallowing it whole.

“He looks like my college roommate doing a shot of Jägermeister.”

Jean wet a towel and bent to scrub splattered mutes off the floor. “He’s just gotta get solid on the glove. He’s so exotic, visitors are gonna love him.”

“Oh, yeah. He’s amazing.”

If the ardor in my voice surprised her, she didn’t let on. I certainly wasn’t telling anyone just then that I’d fallen madly in love with a foot-fetishistic snowy owl who sported a fluffy mustache.

From Wild Within: How Rescuing Owls Inspired a Family (Lyons, 2014), by Melissa Hart

 

 

We asked the Spring Creek community to suggest some things we can all do to help stem the loss of wild species and their habitats, and we received many thoughtful, creative ideas. Some are hands-in-the-dirt pragmatic. Others are more idealistic or theoretical. Since we’ll need to change our minds, our hearts, and our habits to create a culture that celebrates and supports wild nature, all these suggestions can help.

Here are our top three favorites (which earned their authors a free copy of Elizabeth Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction) and a selection of other great entries. Thanks to all who participated, and thanks for working on behalf of wild nature.

Our favorites:
1. Create wildlife underpasses along Oregon roads wherever possible when highway construction (and reconstruction) eliminates existing wildlife travel routes. (Carla Perry)
2. Work to connect children to wild places so they can know them, appreciate them, and love them. (Lisa Zerkle)
3. Know your nature / The world around, and inside / As one, both survive. (Pepper Trail)

More good ideas:

4. Learn to love again the wildness within; then fight anew for the wildness without.
5. Give inherent rights to natural communities to exist, persist, and regenerate their natural cycles in law.
6. Possibly the best way to reduce extinctions is to grow plants and vegetables organically. Pesticides, especially neonicotinoids, kill honey bees. Organic agriculture also diminishes the impacts of GMOs.
7. Redirect money we spend on domestic pets toward guaranteeing wild animals in wild spaces.
8. Abandon tepid incremental approaches and dedicate ourselves to a radical revisioning and restructuring of our political economic system.
9. Abolish the penny and nickel, useless currencies, so we can stop mining for both.
10. Support land trusts and conservancies that preserve, protect, and rehabilitate ‘at-risk’ habitats.
11. Plant more native plants in your backyard to help maintain ecosystems that support local wildlife!
12. Wake up to our fundamental connection to the nonhuman communities and their habitats; their fate is our fate.
13. Talk to your family members who don’t believe in climate change about it, no matter how un-fun the conversation.
14. Reduce your meat consumption and support farmers working to reconnect food systems with ecosystems. Every bite counts!
15. Vote. Elections have consequences. Enforcement of, and support and funding for, the Endangered Species Act are among those consequences.
16. Walk or take the bus. Twice a week instead of driving. It’s almost a 30% reduction in gasoline use. Install solar panels. Cheaper than ever.
17. Be present: be aware; claim personal power; speak up for processes that sustain all life; join others; practice democracy.
18. Let everyone you know into the “secret” that you spend a heck of a lot of time outdoors. Teach by example, by touch and feel and breath, that outdoors and indoors must flow into one another.
19. Establish wilderness areas that allow no access whatsoever for any reason to human beings and rethink urban development to reduce spread.
20. Reinstate environmental policies that are being eroded little by little for profits. Work hard for cleaner air and water and direct all monies collected from polluters into conservation projects.
21. Slow down, scale down, group up!