Spring Creek Podcast

This special edition of our Luminaries series focuses on creative work about watersheds. Today, in part three of these watershed-focused conversations, guest host Caitlin Scarano talks with Christian Murillo, an award-winning photographer. Christian has worked with National Geographic, Harvard University, and the Smithsonian in his journey to explore the simultaneous power and fragility of nature, particularly within the context of climate change. His book, Soul of the Skagit, tells the story of the Skagit River, starting from its glacial headwaters all the way down into Skagit Valley and the Salish Sea. The story unpacks our place within the natural world, exposing, and at times celebrating, the nuanced relationships that make the Skagit so special. "Luminaries" is produced by the Spring Creek Project at Oregon State University. This series invites people to share stories about writing and art that illuminates their environmental thinking or work.

Welcome back to the special edition of our Luminaries series that focuses on creative work about watersheds. Today, in part two of these watershed-focused conversations, guest host Caitlin Scarano talks with author and photographer Amy Gulick. Amy's images and stories have been featured in Smithsonian, Audubon, National Wildlife, Sierra, and Outdoor Photographer. Her award-winning books include The Salmon Way: An Alaska State of Mind as well as Salmon in the Trees: Life in Alaska's Tongass Rain Forest. Their conversation focuses on Salmon in the Trees, a luminary book for Caitlin's work and thinking about watersheds. The two talk about how this idea of "salmon in the trees" is far more than a metaphor, but an ecological reality that speaks to the interconnection so often taken for granted in our understandings of watersheds. By homing in on the great journey of salmon in Alaska's Tongass National Forest — from freshwater streams to the sea and back again — and on salmon's connection with bears, forests, and ourselves, we gain insights into what a watershed is and how taking care of our watersheds is itself a continuous journey. "Luminaries" is produced by the Spring Creek Project at Oregon State University. This series invites people to share stories about writing and art that illuminates their environmental thinking or work.

Welcome to the first episode of a special four-part edition of our Luminaries series that focuses on creative work about watersheds. This special edition has been curated by Caitlin Scarano, a recipient of the 2024-25 Public Humanities Collaboratory Watershed Fellowship. Caitlin is a writer and poet whose current project explores cultural, political, and ecological interrelationships within the Skagit River watershed, from the dams of its upper reaches out to the Salish Sea. During this four-part series, she interviews four writers and artists whose work on watersheds are luminaries for her. Today, Caitlin speaks with author and longtime environmental journalist, Lynda Mapes. Over the course of her 27-year career as a reporter at the Seattle Times, and as the author of seven books, Lynda has earned numerous awards, including the Kavli Gold Award for Science Journalism from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a National Outdoor Book Award, and the Washington State Book Award for nonfiction. In her work, Lynda centers connections between people and the natural world. Following a confluence of storylines about one of the largest dam removal projects in the world on the Elwha River, Lynda connected deeply with this watershed and the people who care about it. Caitlin talks with Lynda about her reporting and writing, and the ethic of relationality behind them, that led to the book Elwha: A River Reborn. "Luminaries" is produced by the Spring Creek Project at Oregon State University. This series invites people to share stories about writing and art that illuminates their environmental thinking or work.

In the final episode of "The Art of Reconnection" series, co-host Daniela Naomi Molnar speaks with poet and ceremonialist Danielle Vogel about the scope, power, and possibility of language. Danielle is an experimental poet who is committed to an embodied, ceremonial approach to poetics and relies heavily on field research, cross-disciplinary studies, inter-species collaborations, and archives of all kinds. Her installations and site-responsive works are often extensions of her manuscripts and tend to the living archives of memory shared between bodies, languages, and landscapes. She is an associate professor at Wesleyan University and the author of several poetry collections, including A Library of Light, Edges & Fray, and Between Grammars. Daniela and Danielle's conversation is an ode to the power of language — how the written and spoken word rings throughout the body, how it connects with extremely subtle forms of language both inside and outside our bodies, and how writing, editing, and reading become a ceremony. Their conversation ranges from darkness to lightness, from cellular activity to glacial activity, from the personal to the collective. They celebrate the way language acts as a mediating agent between our material and immaterial worlds, allowing us to connect to and therefore mend our interior lives and our environments. Daniela and Danielle invite us to wonder: How can language help us touch time? How do syllables and syntax carry memory in the same way a human body or a geologic body might? And how can becoming aware of the embodied nature of language help us connect across time, across lives, and across bodies? This podcast series was produced by the Spring Creek Project, an initiative of the Patricia Valian Reser Center for the Creative Arts at Oregon State University. The series was created in collaboration with The Arts Center in Corvallis, Oregon.

In part three of "The Art of Reconnection," series co-host Lee Running speaks with guest Ben Goldfarb to take us on an exploration of roads. Their conversation invites us to see these in-between places in new ways. Ben is a conservation journalist and award-winning author. His writing has appeared in many outlets, including The Atlantic, National Geographic, and "The Best American Science and Nature Writing." His first book "Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter" won the 2019 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award. And his latest book "Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet" was named one of the best books of 2023 by the New York Times. Lee creates arresting objects using cast iron, enamel, glass, bone, and handmade paper. Her work intimately explores the impact of human-built systems on the natural world, often incorporating the bodies and bones of animals killed on roads. She invites her audiences to renew their sense of kinship with non-human beings. Lee and Ben have each spent a great deal of time thinking about, walking along, and studying roads. Throughout this conversation, the two discuss this edge landscape, the species that live and die there, and how these arteries of civilization impact non-human beings and ways of life. Their conversation invites us to wonder how systems designed to connect people and places actually function to separate us from place and from each other. And they talk about how their art and writing call on us to take notice, to see, hear, feel, consider, and connect to the places we speed past. This podcast series was produced by the Spring Creek Project, an initiative of the Patricia Valian Reser Center for the Creative Arts at Oregon State University. The series was created in collaboration with The Arts Center in Corvallis, Oregon.

In part two of "The Art of Reconnection," series co-host Daniela Naomi Molnar speaks with guest Marcia Bjornerud about the narratives, notions of time, and deep wisdom embedded within rocks. Marcia is a writer and a structural geologist whose scientific research, which focuses on the physics of earthquakes and mountain building, has taken her around the globe. She is a contributing writer to The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, and the LA Times. She is also the author of the books "Timefulness: How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World" and the recently published "Turning to Stone: Discovering the Subtle Wisdom of Rocks." Throughout Marcia's scientific and academic career, she has learned to listen to landscapes. She and Daniela discuss how the Western fallacies of objectivity and stability may act as a barrier to our innate capacity to notice landscapes not only with our instruments and hypotheses but also with our senses, our lived experiences, and our inherent curiosities. Daniela is a poet, artist, and writer who creates with color, water, language, and place. She makes large-scale abstract paintings with pigments she creates from plants, bones, stones, rainwater, and glacial melt. Gathered from specific biomes she has visited, these paints become palettes of place with which she investigates the earth's site-specific capacity for both memory and resilience. This conversation muses on the vast time scales of geologic change, the alienation and spiritual poverty of the modern Western world, and how careful listening to the slow-moving land may help rattle apart the cage of human exceptionalism that has plagued our current era. Daniela and Marcia also invite us to wonder: What memory does the ground beneath you hold? How does connecting with that story change your experience of the place? And what might it mean for our collective future if we adopted a more geo-centric vision of the world and our place in it? This podcast series was produced by the Spring Creek Project, an initiative of the Patricia Valian Reser Center for the Creative Arts at Oregon State University. The series was created in collaboration with The Arts Center in Corvallis, Oregon.

In part one of "The Art of Reconnection" our series hosts, Lee Emma Running and Daniela Naomi Molnar, engage in a rich conversation about the ways their place-based practices of artmaking have transformed the quality of attention they bring to a place and their appreciation for the deep memory that is carried by the botanical, animal, and mineral elements found there. Daniela is a poet, artist, and writer who creates with color, water, language, and place. She makes large-scale abstract paintings with pigments she creates from plants, bones, stones, rainwater, and glacial melt. Gathered from specific biomes she has visited, these paints become palettes of place with which she investigates the earth's site-specific capacity for both memory and resilience. Lee creates arresting objects using cast iron, enamel, glass, bone, and handmade paper. Her work intimately explores the impact of human-built systems on the natural world, often incorporating the bodies and bones of animals killed on roads. She invites her audiences to renew their sense of kinship with non-human beings. Throughout their conversation, Lee and Daniela reflect on how foraging for, taking care of, and collaborating with their materials — from cabbage leaf, to deer bone, to ocher — has cultivated in them a nuanced attention to place and a profound capacity for holding seeming opposites: violence and beauty, loss and resilience, brokenness and repair. They discuss how the intense sensitivity of their materials makes even the most prolific sources of pigment, like queen anne's lace, intimately site-specific; how noticing the ways materials respond to each other necessarily troubles Western notions of separateness; and how meeting grief with care and attention can reshape and heal our relationship to places of loss. This conversation takes place shortly after Lee and Daniela's shared exhibition "Transformation/Reclamation" was installed at The Arts Center in Corvallis, Oregon, in September 2024. While in Corvallis, Lee hosted a group dinner on a roadside verge, calling attention to the often forgotten border at the edge of our roads. We enter this conversation by way of the artists' reflection on that experience. This podcast series was produced by the Spring Creek Project, an initiative of the Patricia Valian Reser Center for the Creative Arts at Oregon State University. The series was created in collaboration with The Arts Center in Corvallis, Oregon.

Welcome to "The Art of Reconnection," a new podcast series produced by the Spring Creek Project, an initiative of the Patricia Valian Reser Center for the Creative Arts at Oregon State University. The series was created in collaboration with The Arts Center in Corvallis, Oregon. During this four-part series, place-based artists Lee Running and Daniela Naomi Molnar invite us to imagine ways of restoring our relationship to the land. Their artistic practices have helped them hold grief and love, anger and forgiveness, reverence and wonder. By creating art from a place—working with pigments ground from ancient rock or piecing together the precious bones of animals killed on roadsides—these artists are exploring ways to rekindle sacred connection to the land and the more-than-human beings who live there. Through conversations with each other and invited guests, hosts Lee and Daniela invite us to slow down, look deeply, and explore how places that hold the scars of human impacts not only carry the memory of loss but also the steadfastness of deep, geological time and the possibility of healing.

Because of unequal gender norms globally, women are impacted first and worst by climate change, and yet, one of the untold stories is how incredibly vital women are to local and global solutions. In this episode, Osprey Orielle Lake joins colleague Ashley Guardado to explore the ways in which empowering women worldwide is essential to climate justice work. Study after study shows that we must involve women at every level if we are to succeed in areas of just climate solutions, social equality, and bold transformative change. Osprey Orielle Lake is the founder and executive director of the Women's Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN) International, an organization that unites women worldwide in building the movement for social and ecological justice. Osprey works internationally with grassroots, BIPOC and Indigenous leaders, policymakers, and diverse coalitions to accelerate the climate justice movement, build more resilient communities, and transition to a decentralized, democratized clean-energy future. She sits on the executive committee for the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature and on the steering committee for the Fossil Free Non-Proliferation Treaty. She is the author of the award-winning book "Uprisings for the Earth: Reconnecting Culture with Nature" and her new book "The Story Is in Our Bones: How Worldviews and Climate Justice Can Remake a World in Crisis." Additional resouces: Why Women: https://www.wecaninternational.org/why-women Women Speak: https://womenspeak.wecaninternational.org/ This talk is part of the series "Collective Climate Action: Inspired Organizing for Our Future" produced by the Spring Creek Project at Oregon State University. If you'd like to watch a video version of this talk, it's available on Spring Creek Project's YouTube channel.

Where is the space for hope in a world where it is almost impossible not to feel hopeless and broken? In that "almost," argues journalist Diego Arguedas Ortiz. In this episode, Diego argues that climate hope is linked with action: both ours and that of others alongside us. He follows the case of climate journalism, which was traditionally a domain of science and environment reporters; now, it is populated by political writers, sports editors and photojournalists that want to do their part. This expanding landscape offers a template for others to find their own space in the climate movement. Diego Arguedas Ortiz is Associate Director at the Oxford Climate Journalism Network of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford. There, he supports a community of over 600 reporters and editors from more than 120 countries as they improve the quality and impact of their climate journalism. A Costa Rican reporter, he has covered climate change as his main beat since 2013. His work has appeared in BBC Future, MIT Technology Review, Le Monde Diplomatique, Univision and Anthropocene, among other outlets. His work includes six UN Climate Conferences, the Panama Papers international collaboration in 2016 and on-the-ground reporting from a dozen countries. In 2015, he was the founder of Ojo al Clima, Central America's first climate news outlet, which he led as its editor until 2019. From 2019 to 2021, he worked as an advisor on climate change communication for the Minister of Environment and Energy of Costa Rica and the Climate Change Directorate of Costa Rica. This talk is part of the series "Collective Climate Action: Inspired Organizing for Our Future" produced by the Spring Creek Project at Oregon State University. If you'd like to watch a video version of this talk, it's available on Spring Creek Project's YouTube channel.

People often think that social movements emerge when people get so frustrated with the state of things that they cannot not act. They think that only people who really believe in the cause join social movements. And they think that social movements only have an impact when they change the hearts and minds of the public. In this episode, Francesca Polletta draws on research about social movements to say why each one of these commonsensical beliefs is actually wrong. Then she suggests what lessons we can take from the reality of why movements emerge, why people participate, and when movements have an impact, especially for building a movement to stop climate change. Francesca Polletta is Chancellor's Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine. She studies the cultural dimensions of protest and politics, asking how and when politically disadvantaged groups have mobilized to make change. Her books include "Freedom Is an Endless Meeting: Democracy in American Social Movements," "It Was Like a Fever: Storytelling in Protest and Politics," "Inventing the Ties that Bind: Imagined Relationships in Moral and Political Life," "Passionate Politics: Emotions and Social Movements," and, with Edwin Amenta, "Changing Minds: When Movements Have Cultural Impact." Francesca is currently working on projects about the kinds of storytelling that have persuasive power and about the cultural impacts of the women's movement. This talk is part of the series "Collective Climate Action: Inspired Organizing for Our Future" produced by the Spring Creek Project at Oregon State University. If you'd like to watch a video version of this talk, it's available on Spring Creek Project's YouTube channel.

In this episode, Aisha Shillingford invites us into a practice of imaginative world-building that involves thinking far into the future, deep intuition, and bold dreaming. She says we have the right and the responsibility to imagine another future, and what comes next depends on our ability to imagine. Aisha asks us to imagine not just changing our current system by knocking down what's not working, but envisioning new systems altogether. She also reminds us that making space for imaginative work and allowing time for rest are necessary for entering a mindset of bold visioning and working toward the world we want to build. Aisha Shillingford is an artist, world builder, poet, and the Artistic Director of Intelligent Mischief. Her mixed-media collages, text-based work, street art, murals, installation and experiential design work reflect Black utopias, abolition, Black radical imagination, solidarity economics and climate futures. She has been an artist in residence within Laundromat Project's Creative Change Program, a mentor at the New Museum Incubator, and a Project Fellow at NYU Tisch Interactive Technology Program. She is committed to creating art, spaces and experiences that inspire Black folks to imagine and co-create beautiful futures together. This talk is part of the series "Collective Climate Action: Inspired Organizing for Our Future" produced by the Spring Creek Project at Oregon State University. If you'd like to watch a video version of this talk, it's available on Spring Creek Project's YouTube channel.

While we need urgent responses to climate breakdown, we will only make meaningful progress once we recognize that it is a symptom of a deeper underlying malaise affecting our society. Climate must be understood as one aspect of a multifaceted process of global ecological degradation caused by problematic characteristics of our socioeconomic system. In this episode, author Jeremy Lent explains how the underlying cultural foundations of modern civilization have led to our current crisis, and identifies the key leverage points that could redirect our society toward a more sustainable and flourishing future. Lent shows how it's possible to envisage a robust foundation on which a coherent civilizational framework could be established to set the conditions for all human beings to thrive on a healthy, vibrant planet. Jeremy Lent is an author and speaker whose work investigates the underlying causes of our civilization's existential crisis, and explores pathways toward a life-affirming future. His award-winning books, "The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity's Search for Meaning" and "The Web of Meaning: Integrating Science and Traditional Wisdom to Find Our Place in the Universe," trace the historical underpinnings and flaws of the dominant worldview, and offer a foundation for an integrative worldview that could lead humanity to a flourishing future. He has written extensively about the vision and specifics of an ecological civilization and is founder of the Deep Transformation Network, an online global community exploring pathways for a deep transformation toward a life-affirming future on a regenerated Earth. This talk is part of the series "Collective Climate Action: Inspired Organizing for Our Future" produced by the Spring Creek Project at Oregon State University. If you'd like to watch a video version of this talk, it's available on Spring Creek Project's YouTube channel.

Today's "Luminaries" guest is Fred Swanson, a former research geologist with the USDA Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station, and a Senior Fellow of the Spring Creek Project. He is co-editor of the books "Forest Under Story: Creative Inquiry in an Old-Growth Forest" and "In the Blast Zone: Catastrophe and Renewal on Mount St. Helens." Fred has a deep history with the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest in Oregon's Cascade Range as both a scientist who has studied this place for decades and a supporter of the Long-Term Ecological Reflections program that has hosted more than 120 writers and artists in residence at the Andrews Forest. During this episode, Fred shares how Robert Michael Pyle's essay "The Long Haul" gave him a new perspective on his own role as a researcher and on the importance of taking the long view. Robert Michael Pyle is the author of nearly 30 books of prose and poetry. He is also a conservation biologist, butterfly expert, Guggenheim Fellow and one of the first writers-in-residence at the Andrews Forest. "The Long Haul" was an early contribution to the Long-term Ecological Reflections program, which is designed to last for 200 years, or approximately seven generations of human lives but only a quarter of the lifetime of the oldest red cedars. "Luminaries" is produced by the Spring Creek Project at Oregon State University. This series invites people to share stories about writing and art that illuminates their environmental thinking or work.

In this episode, Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr. addresses the interconnected issues of climate change, poverty, economic injustice, and other social injustices affecting vulnerable communities. He explains that it takes collective organizing around the deeper problems of inequality to effectively address the climate crisis and he shares strategies the Hip Hop Caucus uses, including immersive storytelling across mediums, to tackle this work head-on. He discusses the importance of listening to and uplifting frontline leaders working on climate solutions in their communities and encourages us all to be intersectional environmentalists, recognizing that climate justice is racial justice and racial justice is climate justice. At the root of all this work, he speaks of cultivating a world worth saving and keeping hope alive. Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr. is a community activist and the President and CEO of Hip Hop Caucus, a nonprofit addressing issues impacting underserved and vulnerable communities, including climate change. As a national leader within the Green Movement, Rev. Yearwood successfully bridges the gap between communities of color and environmental issue advocacy. He is a leader in campaigns calling for divestment from fossil fuels and increasing diversity in the climate movement. He has fought on the frontlines for vulnerable communities, including at the international climate negotiations in Paris and efforts to fight new oil pipeline developments in Maryland and at Standing Rock. In 2018, Rev. Yearwood helped launch Think 100%, Hip Hop Caucus's award-winning climate communications and activism platform. Comprised of podcast, film, music, and activism opportunities, the platform challenges environmental injustices and shares just solutions to the climate crisis, including a transition to 100% renewable energy for all. This talk is part of the series "Collective Climate Action: Inspired Organizing for Our Future" produced by the Spring Creek Project at Oregon State University. If you'd like to watch a video version of this talk, it's available on Spring Creek Project's YouTube channel.

In this episode, Peter Friederici explains that societal responses to climate breakdown have been closely tied to the dominance of large-scale narratives that promote passivity and inaction. Close examination shows that these narratives follow the structure of classical tragedy as they support the status quo and inhibit creative change. We can do better by instead exploring alternative storytelling frameworks, such as comedy, that allow for adaptability, democratic decision-making, and the embodiment of radical hope. Peter Friederici is an award-winning writer who teaches classes in science communication and applied sustainability at Northern Arizona University. His articles and essays explore connections between humans and place, while much of his teaching-related work is focused on increasing the sustainability of regional food systems on the Colorado Plateau. His books include "Beyond Climate Breakdown: Envisioning New Stories of Radical Hope," which explores how mindful new narrative frameworks can enable humans to better shape their future. This talk is part of the series "Collective Climate Action: Inspired Organizing for Our Future" produced by the Spring Creek Project at Oregon State University. If you'd like to watch a video version of this talk, it's available on Spring Creek Project's YouTube channel.

Climate change often feels overwhelming, leaving us with a sense of despair. To move forward, we need positive visions of a clean, green, and just world — yet these depictions are often lacking. In this episode, Tory Stephens explores why collective visioning and hopeful climate storytelling is a useful tool to creating a better future for all. From his personal journey of skepticism to embracing the power of imagination, he'll demonstrate how envisioning a better future can supercharge our climate efforts across creative projects, policy, advocacy and more. Tory Stephens creates opportunities that transform organizations and shift culture. He is a resource generator and community builder for social justice issues, people and movements. He currently works at Grist Magazine as their climate fiction creative manager, and he uses storytelling to champion climate justice and imagine green, clean, and just futures, including through Grist's "Imagine 2200" annual series. This talk is part of the series "Collective Climate Action: Inspired Organizing for Our Future" produced by the Spring Creek Project at Oregon State University. If you'd like to watch a video version of this talk, it's available on Spring Creek Project's YouTube channel.

Today's "Luminaries" guest is Brooke Kuhnhausen, a psychologist who deeply values creativity and collaboration as portals of transformation and imagination so vitally needed for new ways of being together and caring for our living Earth. She practices depth and relational therapy in her private practice and also trains and consults with other therapists, teaching in various graduate programs and therapy institutes. She is a climate justice advocate, has been part of a number of eco-feminist collaborations with visual artists, and helps others shore up the resilient inner practices necessary to cope with climate grief and show up meaningfully in climate activist spaces. During this episode, Brooke reflects on Joy Harjo's poem "Remember" from the collection "She Had Some Horses." Brooke explores the depths of Harjo's words by weaving in her own experience and the words of other writers and thinkers she admires. Joy Harjo (b. 1951) is a renowned poet, writer and musician from the Muscogee Nation. She served three terms as the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States. Her many honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship and lifetime achievement awards from National Book Critics Circle and the Poetry Foundation. "She Had Some Horses" was first published in 1983. "Luminaries" is produced by the Spring Creek Project at Oregon State University. This series invites people to share stories about writing and art that illuminates their environmental thinking or work.

In this episode, Emily Johnston explains that the life we're living now isn't just on a collision course with Earth's limits; it's also historically abnormal in the extreme. How can we ensure that our social nature begins to work far more for a thriving world, than against one? Emily Johnston is an essayist (anthologized in "All We Can Save") and poet ("Her Animals"), as well as a co-founder of 350 Seattle, and more recently of Troublemakers. She was also part of the valve-turner action in 2016, shutting down all the tar sands crude pipelines into the U.S. with four friends. She hosts the podcast "A Wild and Beautiful World." This talk is part of the series "Collective Climate Action: Inspired Organizing for Our Future" produced by the Spring Creek Project at Oregon State University. If you'd like to watch a video version of this talk, it's available on Spring Creek Project's YouTube channel.

In this episode, Jennifer Atkinson explains that the age of climate consequences is upon us, and anxiety and despair are rising along with global temperatures. To successfully face the challenges ahead, we need to build more than solar panels and sea walls — we also need to build the emotional resilience to stay engaged in climate work over the long haul. She offers five key steps for navigating the psychological and emotional impacts of climate change while channeling our anxiety into collective efforts to create a livable future. Jennifer Atkinson is an author and Professor of environmental humanities at the University of Washington, Bothell. She researches eco-anxiety, grief and hope, and teaches seminars on climate and mental health that have been featured nationwide. Her most recent book, "The Existential Toolkit for Climate Justice Educators: How to Teach in a Burning World," offers strategies to help young people navigate the emotional toll of climate breakdown. Her podcast "Facing It" also gives listeners tools to channel eco-anxiety into action. This talk is part of the series "Collective Climate Action: Inspired Organizing for Our Future" produced by the Spring Creek Project at Oregon State University. If you'd like to watch a video version of this talk, it's available on Spring Creek Project's YouTube channel.