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Walking As A Ritual


The writer Robert McFarlane brilliantly expresses reflections about walking in The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot, The Wild Places, and Mountains of the Mind. While walking, we get to know a place, but more deeply, we are shaped and changed by the landscape. Walking gives me a magical entry into place. I feel that I join with archetypal beings whose feet, hooves, boots, and paws have worn away the same ground. A walk in nature can generate a map of profound emotion, which I can experience as awe, love, grief. Like a ghost, I pass through a world of feelings and try to access the traces of other ghosts that have traveled the trail before me. 


Creating the Fire/Land piece is an “art walk” to explore feelings like love and grief about landscape. 


I walk to contemplate my connection to place in the face of my climate grief. I’m grieving with the forest as a biological creature that can only hold so much. It can only bounce back so far. The new USDA Forest Service report on California tree mortality is something to grieve over. Measured from 2021 to 2022, “mortality consisted primarily of true fir which comprised over 77% of the total and was the largest tally ever recorded… particularly severe and widespread in the central Sierra Nevada Range.” Cedar and oak death was also significant. Across the state, acres with Douglas fir death increased 973%. According to the report, El Dorado County has an estimated 78,000 acres impacted by mortality with an estimated 1.4 million dead trees. Recent trends--heat, drought, and insect infestation--are inflecting their damage on California's trees and will make predictions around wildfire that much more dire. 


People respond to grief in different ways. Dr. Thomas Doherty explains that people respond to climate grief “in character”, that is, their response to climate grief is similar to how they respond to grief in other areas. If we bounce back quickly, we show resilience. If it takes longer to heal, we are in recovery. If we are stuck, it’s called dysfunction.


I’m pretty familiar with all of these states. I am slow to heal. Once I realize I am paralyzed, though, I move to respond, inching my way eventually toward resilience. Art can be a journey in healing, although it also brings along its share of fear and doubt. I think the art process requires a struggle with doubt to push through the challenges. This current work is germinating gradually. And, by creating a piece based on walking on the land and holding trauma gently, whether it's grief from a wildfire experience or climate crisis or many other of life’s upheavals, I hope the process produces a path that is beneficial, where others will want to come along for the stroll.


-- Ameera Godwin, Co-Founder and Artistic Director, Myrtle Tree Arts



FIRE/LAND

An Experience Inspiring Community Resilience

Saturday, June 10th, 2023, 4PM - 10PM

Wakamatsu Farm, 941 Cold Springs Road, Placerville, CA 95667


A project of Myrtle Tree Arts and co-hosted by the American River Conservancy, this unique "art rock opera for the forest" and public forum will happen at the landmark Wakamatsu Farm. During the speaker forum in the late afternoon, local experts and representatives will share community issues related to wildfire, land stewardship, emergency preparedness, cultural preservation, and forest ecology. The evening features Main Street Collective's Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon 50th Anniversary concert followed by FIRE/LAND: Knowing the Territory, a musical and dramatic performance starring musicians, singers, Native American storyteller, and video projections in a creative exploration of wildfire, ecological change, and resilience in El Dorado County. This intellectual and creative experience strives to spark inspiration and your call to action in support of community resilience! See more details on the Myrtle Tree Arts Fire/Land page.


FIRE/LAND: The Exhibition

Arts and Culture El Dorado SWITCHBOARD GALLERY

525 Main St. Placerville, CA

June 8 - August 6, 2023

Experience this installation of Ameera Godwin's digital prints and video from FIRE/LAND.

 

Artist Talk, July 13th, 6pm 

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