Myrtle Tree Arts Journal

The present is just a moment in the continuous unfolding of perceptions and experiences. In meditative practice, I actively try to observe the arising and vanishing of the present to develop the skills to be in the present with deeper awareness. Similarly, the rapid passing of frames of video, the interweaving of streams of images and sounds, is for me, a way of observing an ephemeral present. "Right View" by Ameera Godwin   In this state of mind, I can start to experience a quality of "right view.": seeing what is true, and discerning how to respond, compassionately, ethically. I try to cultivate a relationship to temporality, "as an on-going purposeful effort to create one’s time and keep up one’s sensed continuity in time," as described by Estonian researcher, Kätlin Pulk . Working with digital video and using various non-narrative film approaches, my raw materials are the moving pixels with attributes like duration, speed, frequency, synchrony and as...

Paul Godwin & Miguel Noya (Dogon) Music for FIRE/LAND: Knowing the Territory has been a huge part of the creation process for this "Art Rock Opera for the Forest." We began with a gorgeous and somewhat somber composition that came about in 2018 when Miguel Noya, the Venezuelan electronic composer attended our artist residency at Talking Tree Ranch in Placerville. The composition is routed in a repeating piano pattern nested rhythmically in the key of C# minor. There is an interwoven melody taken up by piano, then violin and finally a synthesizer enters with a counter theme -  swirling, gorgeously rising with an inherent longing and perhaps, sadness. The piece was not released until now, when it found a home in the opening FIRE/LAND  Overture – recast as “Whichever Way the Wind Blows.” The piano ostinato will return again as a foundation for “A Moral Dilemma” and then “We All Play a Part” as our Finale.  How does one create music for an “art rock opera for the forest”...

History is part of us even when we are unaware of it. I’d been living in and hiking around the Foothills for years without knowing much about the complex factors that shaped the history of this heavily forested area. I set out to learn more about what has brought us to the perilous wildfire conditions of the present moment. With the Caldor Fire of 2021 taking out more than 200 homes and 250,000 acres, and the increase of mega-fires across California generally, wildfire brings a strong connection to grief around the disruption of family life, the loss of generations of trees, damage to soil and wildlife, and release of masses of carbon. What historical forces might be relevant to understand where we are now? The forest holds a history that can explain our current state. Last fall I had a conversation with Tony Valdez, an energetic rock climber and passionate storyteller who worked for 37 years with the US Forest Service. Tony lent me his copy of the book by Timothy Egan, The Big Burn ....

A recent classroom-based workshop on Prescribed Burning was my first immersion into learning about fire behavior and concepts rooted in science, law, and practice on the ground. Beneficial Disturbance. Heat Management. F.R.I. for Fire Return Interval. Learning about burning and its connections to culture and biodiversity was a first step toward overcoming my own negative perceptions about fire.  The course was led by experts Chris Paulus and Cordi Craig of Placer County, and coordinated by Kestrel Grevatt and the American River Conservancy, and emphasized the benefits of careful, legal burning. We were introduced to fuels and forest types, fire and wind behavior, state statutes and personal liabilities, Indigenous cultural burning and native plant adaptation. The experience was surprisingly rich.   “The forest has memory,” announced Chris, a well-spoken and commanding retired CAL FIRE Battalion Captain. “The forest has to be allowed to remember itself.” I’m going to borr...

Here in the Foothills of Northern California, the potential for wildfire is likely the most imminent and dangerous risk we experience on an ongoing basis. In El Dorado County, the Caldor Fire of 2021 left a massive footprint ecologically and socially, and like other wildfires, including last fall’s Mosquito Fire, it will continue to impact the land and people here. Numerous efforts in the county are addressing wildfire recovery and protection, and aligned with those efforts, I had an idea for public art to be woven into the fabric of awareness, care, support, and resilience, in the face of increasing wildfire and climate-related risks in the region. Walking and driving in areas of the Caldor burn scar can bring up swells of grief, shock, and sorrow, and a sense of unique beauty. I’ve marked spots on a map on my phone where the burn scar shows powerful views of change: in Sly Park and Happy Valley, over the crest of Mormon Emigrant Trail, at the bridge at Silver Fork, up the road to Wri...

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 Californi...