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LAB publications "I Was Born!": Personal Experience Narratives and Tree-Ring Marker Years Nick Koenig and Erin James. Philosophies 9 (6): 166 (2024) open access link Unsettling Fire: Recognizing Narrative Compassion Erin James, Jack Kredell, Jennifer Ladino, Teresa Cavazos Cohn, Kayla Bordelon, and Michael Decker. Narrative 32.3 (October 2024). PDF available Building a Geospatial Archive of Species Loss as a Response to Local Caribou Extinction Jack Kredell, Chris Lamb, and Devin Becker. Environmental Humanities 17.1 (March 1, 2025). PDF available Why Worry? The Utility of Fear for Climate Justice Jennifer Ladino. Climate Justice Educators Toolkit. Jennifer Atkinson and Sarah Jaquette Ray, eds. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2024. link to projejct Telling Climate Truths: Harnessing Storytelling for Rural Communities Jennifer Ladino. Love Your Mother: 50 States, 50 Stories, and 50 Women United for Climate Justice . Mallory McDuff, ed. Broadleaf Books, 2023. link to book Fiction, Belief, and Climate Change Erin James. The Routledge Handbook of Fiction and Belief . Alison James , Akihiro Kubo , Françoise Lavocat , eds. Routledge, 2023. link to book The Potential for Changing Public Perception on Climate Change Through Narratives Kristin Haltinner, Dilshani Sarathchandra, Jennifer K. Ladino, Erin James, John W. Anderson, Matt Grindal, and Markie McBrayer. Sociology Compass , 19: e70046. open access link Fuels and Ladders: Catalizing the "Fire Humanities" for Fire Adaptation Sasha Michelle White. FAC Net , November 2, 2023. open access link The Power of Prescribed Fire: A Wildfire Journalist Steps Behind the Drip Torch Kylie Mohr. High Country News , February 1, 2025. open access link How Nostalgia Drives and Derails Living with Wildland Fire in the American West Jennifer Ladino, Leda N. Kobziar, Jack Kredell, & Teresa Cavazos Cohn, editor: Natasha Ribeiro Fire, 2022 open access link Feeling skeptical: Worry, dread, and support for environmental policy among climate change skeptics Kristin Haltinner, Jennifer Ladino, & Dilshani Sarathchandra Emotion, Space & Society, v.39, 2021 PDF available LAB reports: 2019 - 25 2022 2021 2020 2019

Experience with Fire as a Writer: Why It's Necessary to Go Outside a profile of Jennifer Yu by Bailey Lowe As a fiction author who likes to write about wilderness, nature, and the environment, second-year MFA student Jennifer Yu couldn’t pass up the opportunity to get out into the field and engage with these topics in a physical, embodied way. When she learned about the Artists-in-Fire Residency Program through the University of Idaho’s Confluence Lab, she knew she had to apply. Yu says, “I think it's really important, really helpful, really valuable, and perhaps even necessary, to go outside” to gain a more authentic experience of how humans actually engage with nature. Before moving to Idaho, Yu lived in Colorado and Los Angeles—places that that are especially impacted by fire—and the Artists-in-Fire Residency Program allowed her to get up close and personal with fire and experience it in an entirely new way. As part of the program, Yu spent two weeks in the northeastern Washington wilderness where she participated in a Prescribed Fire Training Exchange (TREX ). For these exchanges, people who have varying levels of experience regarding fire (such as firefighters with different backgrounds or even fiction authors, as in Yu’s case) come together to learn about prescribed fire and participate in prescribed fire experiences where they use specialized equipment to safely burn multiple predetermined sections of land. To prepare for the TREX, Yu and the other embedded artists first had to complete the Firefighter Type 2 certification (FFT2), which qualifies them to fight and prevent wildfires. This certification included 40 hours of online training as well as a pack test, which required the participants to complete a three mile walk while carrying a 45-pound pack in 45 minutes. Yu joked that the pack test was perhaps the most stressful part of this experience. During the Training Exchange, which took place in late September to early October, Yu and the other TREX participants worked together to scout the area, plan and prepare to burn, burn numerous acres, and finally do “mop up,” which entails both ensuring that the fire is completely out and doing any necessary restorative work. Yu explained that before the exchange, the TREX organizers coordinated with private landowners and state and federal agencies to research, document, and plan which units are candidates for prescribed burns—immense prework goes into this process before any fires are lit. The TREX participants also had ample training on site with the equipment needed to burn the land. The first few days of the exchange involved physical training with equipment such as a drip torch, the different parts of a fire engine, hose lines, rakes, and portable water bladders. Throughout this experience, Yu learned to respect fire as not just a monolithic, destructive force, but as something that is beneficial to the ecosystem and the environment. She also learned that, if used properly, prescribed and controlled fire can reduce the likelihood of an out-of-control wildfire in the future. Yu also expressed how this concept is not at all a new realization; a few members of the TREX were from the Spokane tribe, and they have been doing preventative burning for generations. However, Yu explained that this healthy, symbiotic relationship with fire still must include deep respect, because fire is a powerful natural force that we cannot always control. Being near something so powerful gave Yu an emotionally intense experience, and she expressed that she felt almost a euphoria after burning land for hours at a time. Yu also said that, as a writer, this experience “was at least as much about the people as it was about fire.” Because this group of people lived so closely for 12 days in high stress situations, they quickly developed a tight bond. One evening during the exchange, Yu had the opportunity to give a presentation to the team members about the role of fictionality in telling stories about fire. She explained how fictionality is a double-edged sword that can be used to create emotion and excitement in readers that directs them to focus on targeted topics, but also can cause generalizations and hyperbole, especially when discussing topics such as humans-vs-fire. Just as Yu learned to respect fire as an outsider, she was able to share her knowledge about storytelling with experienced firefighters. To end her presentation, Yu had her team members write their own short stories about fire. She had them draw words or phrases out of a hat that had to do with their TREX experience, such as “flame length” or “weather” or “burn,” and then had them use those words to construct a tale. She said that it was a really fun experience, and they all read the stories together. Overall, this experience helped Yu as an author to expand her “aperture of thinking and writing” in a way that a classroom setting cannot. While academia is valuable for writers, Yu explained how sitting in a classroom all day is not necessarily synergistic with writing: “As a writer and as a grad student, it's so easy to just get totally consumed by your immediate day to day. There's a way in which sometimes it feels like my entire world is one square mile of the campus and everything I do is this one square mile and everyone I know are the people in this one square mile. And as a writer, that is bad, because you cannot conceptualize the world outside of yourself.” Yu is currently working on a novel about human relationships with climate and the environment, and the Artists-in-Fire Residency Program has helped her understand how fire behaves and has given her a real understanding of what it is like to be in such close proximity to such a powerful force. This hands-on research will influence her novel in a way that not all authors get to experience.

featured artist Jackie Barry Longmont, CO Jackie Barry is a multidisciplinary artist, forester, and wildland firefighter based in Colorado. They are interested in the integration of the arts and humanities into natural resource management, and how art can increase ecological literacy for communities. They graduated from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia in 2011 with a BFA in Printmaking/Book Arts and are scheduled to graduate from Oregon State University's School of Forestry this spring with a Masters of Natural Resources, focused on Forest Ecosystems and Society. Jackie currently works as a forest ecosystem manager and wildland firefighter in Boulder, Colorado. featured artwork "Medio Fire", 35mm film shot on Olympus Stylus Epic, 2020 "Boys in the Truck", 35mm film on Olympus Stylus Epic, 2020 "Cole", 35mm film shot on Olympus Stylus Epic, 2020 responding to SIGHTLINES This body of work was created over the fire season of 2020, one of the most "prolific" wildfire years in American history. At the time I was a wildland firefighter on the Santa Fe Hotshots, based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Throughout the season, I carried a film camera with me and tried to document life on the crew and some of the fire suppression activities. The images were shot in New Mexico, Arizona, and California. When people think of firefighters, large red engines with ladders and people in bulky fire uniforms come to mind. You see and hear the engines flashing their lights and blaring their sirens throughout towns and communities all over the country. When you ask people what they know about wildland firefighters, most people don't know what to say; they either don't know what the difference is, or don't live in a part of the country that is regularly exposed to wildfire. The difference between structure firefighters and wildland firefighters is visibility: you don't see us when we work, we aren't in the front-country. When we get a fire call, we load up into our trucks or buggies, make our way to the incident–sometimes days away–and hike miles into the fire over wild, harsh terrain–carrying chainsaws, enough rations and water for the day, emergency shelters, tools, and anything else we might need. We are hardly ever witnessed, and therefore, not celebrated the way that structure firefighters are. In sharing these images, I hope to increase visibility of wildland firefighters and hotshots. I hope that raising awareness around wildfire and wildland firefighters will increase support for better wages for wildland firefighters and increase ecological literacy regarding forests and the wildland urban interface. I began my work as a wildland firefighter in Twisp, Washington in 2018; my love for the PNW and its relationship to fire runs deep. more from Jackie's perspective Performing Burn Ops on the Bighorn Fire in Tucson, 2020 Organizing the woodlot with the tractor in Boulder, Colorado, 2023. Working with an air tanker on the Bumblebee Fire, Bumblebee AZ, 2020. This tanker doused our crew buggies in retardant on roadside, and sprayed some traffic on the highway as well. Hiking in the snow looking for Christmas tress towards the end of their 2022 season. Chat back to exhibition Chat

Confluence Lab intern and MFA candidate Isabel Marlens worked with University of Idaho librarian Evan Williamson to create Fire Lines: Exploring the Legacy of 1910's Great Fire in the Northwest. Fire Lines a Stories of Fire Project Isabel Marlens w/ Evan Williamson Fall 2022 to Spring 2023 supported by the Confluence Lab and the University of Idaho English Department at the University of Idaho Confluence Lab intern and MFA candidate Isabel Marlens worked with University of Idaho librarian Evan Williamson to create Fire Lines: Exploring the Legacy of 1910's Great Fire in the Northwest . This digital humanities creative nonfiction essay combines holdings from UofI's archives with Marlens's original writing on the history of fire management and our evolving cultural understandings of wildfire. The essay, part of the Confluence Lab's Stories of Fire atlas projects , launched in April 2023 and will be part of the permanent collection at UofI's Center for Digital Inquiry and Learning . Fire Lines was supported and informed by the Lab's partnership with the University of Oregon's Just Futures Institute, which is funded by the Mellon Foundation. Using JFI research principles and support from Confluence Lab and English faculty, Marlens focused on Idaho's unique history and rural and Indigenous communities. Combining creative nonfiction and historical visual and archival materials, Fire Lines is just one example of the Confluence Lab's ongoing, multidisciplinary efforts to document our region's Stories of Fire. This project is part of the Lab's Stories of Fire Atlas Project. read the FULL ESSAY . Next

featured artist Sonia Sobrino Ralston Somerville, MA Sonia Sobrino Ralston is a designer and researcher from Vancouver, Canada. She is currently the Research and Teaching Fellow in Art + Design at the Northeastern College of Media, Art, and Design. She is interested in the intersections between landscape, architecture, and the history of technology, and her current design and writing projects center on the potential of plants to be understood as sensors, the organization and datafication of living collections, and the biopolitical history of bioindicators. Sonia recently graduated with distinction from the Harvard Graduate School of Design with a Master of Landscape Architecture where she was awarded the Landscape Architecture Thesis Prize and the Digital Design Prize for her thesis, “Uncommon Knowledge.” She also holds a Master of Architecture from Princeton University where she received a certificate in Media + Modernity. She was the assistant curator for the 2022 Tallinn Architecture Biennale on the theme “Edible: Or, the Architecture of Metabolism,” and recently assisted with the design and organization of a symposium on landscape pedagogy at the Harvard GSD and supported a science communication project at the metaLAB at Harvard. Her writing has been published in the Avery Review and Cartha Magazine, she co-authored a chapter in Urban Transformations, and her collaborative work has been exhibited in Tallinn, Cambridge, and Sao Paulo. featured artwork Forests as Data Governance digital animation, digital Collage, 1920x1080px, various digital collage sizes, 2023 responding to SIGHTLINES Forests as Data Governance is a fragment of a larger work focused on the design of a speculative future for environmental data governance. We don't usually think of the landscape itself--its plants, trees, and soils--as a form of data or informational tool, and yet they operate as a form of responsive wetware that responds to the site and environmental cycles. This speculative vision for a physical database for information, a forest made of binary code grafted to the genetic code of plants, imagines a future where plants are understood as a critical data infrastructure to be collectively stewarded. In the summer of 2022, a wildfire burned across the Columbia River valley, 200 meters away from Google’s first hyperscale data center in The Dalles, Oregon, near Taylor Lake. While fire-resistant plants such as Oregon oaks and Ponderosa pines survived, the fragility of information infrastructure became urgent. Systems to protect critical infrastructure along the river involve high-fidelity LIDAR scans of the area to simulate systems of flood protection and damage. But in a future where plants become critical infrastructure, a form of long-term information storage, the fluctuations of the environment become embedded in its management. The future envisions a nursery and genetic laboratory where environmental information is grafted into the genetic information of ponderosa pines, Oregon oaks, and incense cedars. Through the collective management of the landscape, the future of a fire-prone site relies on the sensitive management and care for the land, rather than the black boxes of water-hungry data centers. Rendering plants alongside the pointclouds of a LIDAR dataset of the site, plants are elevated to the level of infrastructure through high-fidelity botanical models in the submitted animations. As plants live and grow on the site, over time, they too become integrated into the abstracted pointcloud as a form of landscape data. more on Data Governance Sonia's thesis Uncommon Knowledge: Practices and Protocols for Environmental Information responding to the contemporary environmental information economy at the site of Google's first hyperscale data center in water stressed The Dalles, Oregon on display at Harvard Graduate School of Design in 2023. Data visualization of various sites including the site featured in SIGHTLINES where on view. Read and view more about her work HERE . A video introduction to her research is also below. more from Sonia's perspective Since moving to Boston as part of my landscape architecture education, I spent many summer afternoons walking in the Arnold Arboretum. Here, pictured with a smoke bush (Cotinus coggygria), I became fascinated with the way that botanical collections organize and collect plants as part of an informational system. I grew up in a suburb of Vancouver, BC, where I was used to situating myself by looking at the mountains. Since my childhood, however, wildfires have been creeping closer and closer, and increasingly over the summer the city is enveloped in a blanket of smoke. As areas all over the west coast become increasingly known as centres for technology and information services, this spurred questions for me about how the city’s technological infrastructure is entangled with ecological assemblages. In recent years, the landscapes close to home are increasingly affected by the growing number of fires. Taken on a lake just an hour away, the mountains and trees disappear into the smoke. Faced with these scenes, I wondered how I might rethink my own relationship with the landscapes around me; how might they be considered critical infrastructures to protect? This image, taken in a glacier lake not far from the smokey scene above a few days earlier, is important to me as a landscape designer who considers fire in this work. Landscapes here are full of plants, sensitively adapted to harsh environments and rich in information, ready to adapt under the existential threat of fire. How might we learn from, and pay attention to, the intelligence of plants and natural systems? Chat back to exhibition Chat

featured artists Fuller Initiative for Productive Landscapes: Overlook Field School Eugene, OR The Fuller Initiative for Productive Landscapes (FIPL) is an internationally recognized center for research-based design and design as research, focused on the role of place in cultural sustainability, and grounded in the arts and humanities. Guided by a team of scholars, students use fieldwork and art methods to investigate the ongoing stewardship of landscapes and culture. featured artwork RECOVERY Overlook Field School 2021 Highlights of this five week project can be reviewed in this digital booklet . featuring works by: William Booner, Hanna Chapin, Celia Hensey, Abby Pierce, Kennedy Rauh, Audrey Rycewizc, Massayo Simon, Ian Vierck, Nancy Silver & David Buckly Borden responding to Ground Truths In the western United States, wildfires are becoming bigger, hotter, and more frequent due to the effects of climate change. During the summer of 2021, as smoke from western fires stretched across the country, the Oregon-based session of the Overlook Field School explored the theme of “Recovery” as it relates to wildfire burns. Analogous to resilience, restoration, and regeneration, recovery is a return to some previous state - perhaps a new normal - and ever more complicated when applied to a medium as dynamic as landscape in the time of rapid climate change. Over the course of five weeks, we visited post-fire sites in the Willamette National Forest, most of which occurred within the last 30 years. The projects shared in the Recovery booklet are the outcome of these forest explorations and creative interactions led by educator, Michael Geffel, and artist-in-residence, David Buckley Borden. We were also strongly influenced by concurrent environmental events: a record heat wave which coincided with the first day of the field school, and the explosion of wildfires as we entered our final design phase. Despite the prevailing narrative of catastrophe and destruction, the recovery we observed was incredibly inspirational. The Field School culminated in a public exhibition of temporary landscape installations that centered the dynamism of post-fire landscapes and what they can teach us about resiliency, as we aspired to communicate the beneficial impacts of fire in the face of increasingly longer fire seasons. more from FIPL's projects Despite the prevailing narrative of catastrophe and destruction, the recovery observed by the group was inspiring. We aspired to communicate these experiences through landscape installations in order to express as well as document the beneficial impacts of fire, as we are experiencing increasingly longer fire seasons. The work draws extensively from field visits to post-fire sites within the Willamette National Forest. We were also strongly influenced by concurrent environmental events: a record heat wave and the explosion of wildfires bookended the Field School. Chat back to exhibition Chat

featured artist Allison McClay Portland, OR Allison McClay is a painter, illustrator and mural artist from Portland, Oregon. Her paintings examine historical figures and landscapes through a magical realism filter, creating rich, detailed images that tell a fragment of a story and invite a close look. featured artwork "Olallie Burns" Acrylic on Wood, 20"x16" 2022 "Sucia Saves Us" Acrylic on Wood, 20"x16" 2022 responding to SIGHTLINES These two pieces are part of a new series I am working on that explores the experiences children have with life in a world that is inundated with crisis and climate disaster. In these pieces, the subjects are aware of the fiery landscapes, and though their reactions are not clear, they are definitely not alarmed. I am interested in how they navigate being children within this and what a healthy relationship to destruction and to existential doom could look like. Both of these paintings are inspired by real places that have been affected by fires: Olallie Lake is in Oregon near Mount Jefferson and those burned forests are very real; Sucia Island is in the San Juan Islands in Washington and the fire in the distance is an interpretation of real wildfires that have become more and more common in the area. more from Allison's perspective View of Oneonta Gorge in the Columbia River Gorge area, where there was a massive fire in 2017. Allison's been hiking there her entire life, though many trails are still closed due to damage. View of Olallie Butte, part of the Warm Springs Reservation, in the Jefferson Wilderness. Allison isn't sure when this burn happened, as there seem to be fires in the area often. Row boating in Olallie Lake. My family has been camping around here for the past decade or so, since our previous favorite spot near Mt. Adams was destroyed by fire. View toward the crater of Mt. St. Helens. 43 years after the eruption, signs of life are everywhere. Mountain goat fur caught on a bush blows in the wind. Chat back to exhibition Chat

Stories of Fire: online exhibition series spring 2023 As part of our Pacific Northwest Stories of Fire Atlas Project , working with the University of Idaho's Prichard Art Gallery , we showcased works by visual artists and designers in the online exhibition series, Stories of Fire . These exhibitions will highlight the manifold ways artists and designers are marking, mapping, engaging and articulating personal and community experiences of wildfire in the region. Organized into three parts, GROUND TRUTHS (Spring 2023), FUEL LOADING (Fall 2023) and SIGHTLINES (Winter 2024), each exhibition is loosely framed by a particular disciplinary lens— cartography, fire management and urban planning—and the range of ways artists express and explore parallel concerns. fall 2023 winter 2024 Stories of Fire Participating Artists Laura Ahola-Young Jean Arnold Anne Acker-Mathieu Jackie Barry David Paul Bayles & Frederick J Swanson Karin Bolender / Rural Alchemy Workshop Lisa Cristinzo Megan Davis Fuller Initiative for Productive Landscapes: Overlook Field School Margo Geddes Kelsey Grafton Megan Hatch Alice, Maggie & Rob Keffe Katie Kehoe Kate Lund Amiko Matsu + Brad Monsma aj miccio Miriam H Morrill Julie Mortimer Allison McClay Meredith Ojala Eric Ondina Oregon Episcopal School & Sophia Hatzikos Asante Riverwind Andreas Rutkauskas Gerard Sarnat Martina Shenal Enid Smith Becker Sonia Sobrino Ralston Siri Stensberg Liz Toohey-Wiese Mary Vanek Smith Doug Tolman & Alec Bang Justin Webb Sasha Michelle White Suze Woolf exhibitions presented in collaboration of: and made possible by the generous support of: Next

featured artist Margo Geddes Missoula, MT Margo Geddes is an artist in Missoula, MT. Her photographic practice revolves around the intersections between humans and the natural world. From the cultivated landscape of the garden to the effects of people on wild spaces and vice versa, her images look to surface these complex relationships. She holds an MFA in Photography from the University of Oregon and an MA in Museum Studies from Johns Hopkins University. She has shown her work both nationally and internationally. featured artwork "Standing Dead" silver gelatin print, 10in x10in, 2022 "Heart Boulder" silver gelatin print, 10in x10in, 2022 "Black Ground" silver gelatin print, 10in x10in, 2022 responding to Ground Truths Visiting landscapes I have been close to for over a decade in the Bitterroot Mountains, that have been subject to wildfire and establishing a new relationship with the changed space, has been not only a mourning but a discovery, a truth about the ground, the landscape, and it's relationship with impermanence. Fire season has become ubiquitous during the summer months in Montana and places that I have spent a good deal of time hiking, wandering, knowing, have eventually burned. Finding new landscapes in the wreckage left behind has been a form of healing. In early spring of 2020, while driving forest roads in Bitterroot National Forest, I noticed the granitic boulders, previously hidden in the thick forest, that were starkly strewn across the landscape. I began photographing them to explore this new and swiftly changing landscape: as fireweed takes hold and the forest begins to regenerate they will soon be hidden again. The scope of my work has grown to include a larger view of the scarred landscape as a whole, the trees, the revealed topography, the process of regeneration. more from Margo's perspective A view of Granite Pass, where Margo shot some of the images featured in Ground Truths. Granite Pass burned in the summer of 2021. This was shot July 4, 2022. In it one can see the burned slopes and the forest road winding its way through. Chat back to exhibition Chat

featured artist Megan Hatch Portland, OR Megan Hatch is a queer, multidisciplinary artist living in Portland, OR. She uses art-making to explore the world around and inside of her, and also to share the stories of those journeys. She does this because she knows, deep down, that art is essential to our collective thriving: it’s how we’re going to find our way. You can find more of her work here . featured artwork "the way isn't clear - and yet here we are" archival pigment print, 27in x 10in, 2022 "almost there - losing ground" archival pigment print, 10in x 27in, 2022 "leaning in - falling down" archival pigment print, 10in x 27in, 2022 responding to Ground Truths The earth is burning, and not in a Paris sort of way. We’re told to lean in, only to find ourselves constantly leaning down to pick up the pieces. Losing ground, falling down….We fall in, call in, reach out and sometimes shout with joy. We mend the cracks with the gold we have, and that we are, so we can carry water and each other. I started this work in 2020, which had the worst fire season in Oregon to date. That year also marked the beginning of the COVID pandemic, and George Floyd died at the hands of police. The experience of each of these tragedies was inextricably linked. So much felt broken. So much still does. In this series, the photographs are bound together by a thin golden line as if by kintsugi, the Japanese art of mending broken pottery with gold. They become a series of vessels to hold our hurt and our hope. There is healing to be found in holding multiple truths in our awareness at the same time, in acknowledging the fullness of the moment, and of each other. By doing so, we get to practice wholeness. There is no way to where we want to go without practice. This is my ground truth… The photographs in this series were made on land across the street from where I live in Portland, OR. Once a landfill, it is now an essential urban greenway for wildlife. It has been burned by wildfire twice in the past three years. more of Megan's perspective Ground truth 2: Watching the smoke roll across the land. This photo was taken during the 2020 Oregon fire season, which was one of the worst to date. Ground truth 1: Nearly all of the photos from the series "yes | and" were made on land that is home to Dharma Rain Zen Center . This area was originally a landfill. It is now an essential urban greenway for wildlife. Megan walks there almost every day. Ground truth 3: The land here gets parched every summer now. Brush fires can and do start easily. Living in an area of town with sparse tree cover exacerbates this, among many other detrimental impacts . This year Megan's family is adding several trees and shrubs along the street by their house. They are also amending the soil with biochar, which both increases soil health and sequesters carbon. Chat back to exhibition Chat

featured artists David Paul Bayles Philomath, OR Frederick J Swanson Philomath, OR David Paul Bayles currently lives and photographs in western Oregon, where highly efficient industrialized tree farms supplanted the massive old growth forests many decades ago. He is currently working on a long term project with disturbance ecologist Frederick J Swanson, documenting the forest recovery after the massive 2020 Holiday Farm Fire in the McKenzie River watershed. His photographs have been published in numerous magazines including Orion, Nature, Terrain, Audubon, Harpers, Outside, The L.A. Times Sunday Magazine and others. Public collections include The Portland Art Museum, Santa Barbara Art Museum, Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, The Baldwin Collection MTSU, The Harry Ransom Center, Wildling Museum and others. His first monograph Urban Forest, Images of Trees in the Human Landscape was published in 2003. His next book, Sap In Their Veins , will be published in fall 2023. The Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley created the David Paul Bayles Photographic Archive in 2016 as a permanent home for his entire life’s work. Frederick J Swanson is a retired Research Geologist with the Pacific Northwest Research Station of the US Forest Service; a Senior Fellow with the Spring Creek Project for Ideas, Nature, and the Written Word; and the lead scientist in the Long-Term Ecological Reflections program. This Spring Creek-Andrews Forest collaboration facilitates engagement of writers and artists with the ancient forest of Andrews Forest and the volcanic eruption landscape of Mount St. Helens. Included among these activities have been 110+ writer and artist residencies at Andrews Forest since 2004. Trained as a geologist and specializing in the study of disturbance agents in forest ecosystems, watersheds (fire, flood, landslide, volcanic eruptions, clearcutting, forest roads), and society, it has been natural to connect with human disturbance agents, such as poets and artists. Relevant publications include Forest Under Story: Creative Inquiry in an Old-Growth Forest (2016, Brodie et al., U Washington Press) and In the Blast Zone: Catastrophe and Renewal on Mount St. Helens (2008, Goodrich et al., Oregon State U Press). featured artwork Triptych from Typologies: Charred Abstractions series Triptych from Typologies: Canopy series from Typologies: Charred Abstractions series from the Chronosequences Series: left: Photopoint FFR 2 , right: Photopoint FFR 17 . For this project, Bayles & Swanson selected 42 distinct photopoints that represent different forest conditions. During the first two years they photographed each photopoint twelve times in order to record the changing landscape following the fire. responding to Ground Truths Seeking truth involves boots on the ground while looking for clues in the clouds. That’s what trees do. When Fred and I stood in the charred skeletal forest after the fire, our hearts and minds were full of ideas, questions and curiosity. After two and a half years of climbing over burned trees and falling into stump ghosts, we’re asking better questions. And we’re still curious. Truth may be lodged in the tread of our boots. Learn more about their Following Fire project. more from their perspective Frederick J Swanson at work Photopoint FRR 2 Notebook. Review more HERE. In the mid-seventies David Paul Bayles worked as a logger to earn tuition for photography school. His current studio/gallery was built from our trees that blew down after a neighbor clear cut their land. Read January 17, 2023 LENSCRATCH article "David Paul Bayles and Frederick J Swanson: Following Fire: A Resilent Forest, an Uncertain Future" Chat back to exhibition Chat

2022 was an exciting year for the Confluence Lab. In Moscow, Leah Hampton thrived in her role as Fellow In Residence, continuing her work on the narrative backbone of the Pacific Northwest Climate Justice Atlas project and bringing a team of Lab members to Oregon for a community workshop. LAB report 2022 directors' statement: 2022 was an exciting year for the Confluence Lab. In Moscow, Leah Hampton thrived in her role as Fellow In Residence, continuing her work on the narrative backbone of the Pacific Northwest Climate Justice Atlas project and bringing a team of Lab members to Oregon for a community workshop (details below). We were thrilled to welcome Sasha White into the Lab as our two-year Mellon Predoctoral Fellow! Sasha will pursue a PhD in Environmental Science while serving as project coordinator for the Atlas. Together with Megan Davis and other Lab interns, and CDIL’s Evan Williamson, Sasha helped create the “Where There Is Smoke” project , a crowd-sourced digital map that documents experiences of wildfire smoke in the Pacific Northwest and further afield. A companion postcard project invites people to share their experiences of wildfire smoke by mail. Lab Co-founder and Co-director Teresa Cavazos Cohn started her new job as Associate Professor in the Department of Natural Resources & the Environment at the University of New Hampshire, expanding the Lab into a trans-regional network and leading a new NSF grant proposal to build on our previous pilot project. Lab members Kristin Haltinner and Dilshani Sarathchandra also submitted a proposal to NSF, which is under review. The Lab celebrated the graduation of our first PhD student, Kayla Bordelon, as we successfully wrapped up a two-year NSF Stories of Fire project. Kayla was awarded Outstanding PhD Student in the Environmental Science Program! In 2023, our core team will continue building the Atlas of Fire projects and developing novel approaches to science communication that center narrative and emotion in all aspects of the scientific process. Lab member Stacy Isenbarger created a beautiful new website for the Lab. member news Lab Co-founder and Co-director Erin James published a new book, Narrative in the Anthropocene (Ohio State University Press). You can hear her speak about this work on two podcasts: New Books in Literary Studies and Narrative for Social Justice . Lab Co-founder and Co-director Jenn Ladino, along with Leda Kobziar, Jack Kredell, and Teresa Cohn, co-authored an article, “How Nostalgia Drives and Derails Living with Wildland Fire in the American West,” for a special issue of the journal Fire dedicated to Rethinking Wildland Fire Governance. It is a free, open-access publication found HERE . A firefighter reaches to connect with a giant sequoia wrapped in protective fire shelter “blankets” in Sequoia National Park during the CA wildfires of September 2021. Image Credit: Gary Kazanjian, Getty Images. Stacy Isenbarger ’s artwork was featured in various exhibitions throughout the US and Broadsided Press’s Anthology Fifteen Years of Poetic and Artistic Collaboration, 2005-2020 published in April. Isenbarger also had three solo exhibitions including Detachment Sweet Detachment (Betty Foy Sanders Visual Arts Gallery, Georgia Southern University, Armstrong Campus, Savannah, GA), Edged Means: Threshold (College of Western Idaho, Nampa, ID) and Erosion of Air (Gardiner Gallery of Art, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK). Isenbarger installing Porch Song in Savannah, GA. Kristin Haltinner and Dilshani Sarathchandra’s forthcoming book Inside the Lives of Climate Change Skeptics (University of Washington Press) features survey and interview data with climate skeptics in the pacific northwest to offer insight into the ways that identity, trust, and ideology shape the complexity of skepticism. Recently they talked about their book in an episode of The Vandal Theory Podcast . Kayla Bordelon completed her PhD and started a new job as Assistant Professor of Practice and Regional Fire Specialist, Western Region, in Oregon State University’s Natural Resources Extension Program. Sasha White exhibited artworks and a collaborative performance piece in the inaugural event for the Fuel Ladder art research group, hosted by the University of Oregon’s Center For Art Research in Eugene, Oregon. The exhibition served as the culminating event for the Pacific Northwest Just Futures Institute’s “Futures of Work” Symposium, in which Erin James presented on the Stories of Fire Atlas Project. events In November the Confluence Lab partnered with Coalicion Fortaleza and Our Family Farms to lead a fire resiliency and map-making workshop in Oregon’s Rogue Valley. The 2020 Almeda Fire impacted the Rogue Valley/Jackson County area profoundly, and local nonprofit organizers invited a Confluence team to the area for an afternoon of inter-organizational reflection, information sharing, and map making. The resulting maps of organizations and county resources will be completed and digitized by a Confluence graphic designer at the University of Idaho and given back to local Rogue Valley organizations to help with their future fire resiliency planning and messaging. Teresa Cohn, Erin James, and Jenn Ladino co-led a workshop at Colorado College in February to pilot their Narrative Science framework. Images from Confluence Community Workshop: Mapping Fire Recovery in Oregon's Rogue Valley Kayla Bordelon, in her role with the NASA-sponsored Earth to Sky Idaho Regional Hub for Climate Communication, co-coordinated a multi-day professional development workshop for Idaho educators in February: “Recharge: Connecting Educators and Scientists to Explore Water Issues in Idaho.” Jenn Ladino joined her for a session on “Engaging Emotions in Climate Change Education.” In May, Erin James traveled to Boise to participate in that city’s first ever Youth Climate Summit. The event, planned and coordinated by local high school students, asked “How can students use storytelling, arts, and civic engagement to promote climate action?” Erin ran a workshop with over sixty students and high school teachers on how stories can help communicate climate change. The Lab hosted Dr. Peter Kalmus , NASA climate scientist, activist, and author of Being The Change: Live Well and Spark a Climate Revolution, for a Zoom lecture and conversation on Earth Day, April 22: “Facts Aren’t Enough: Communicating Earth Breakdown.” We are grateful for the co-sponsorship of ENVS, ENGL, JAMM, the Sustainability Center, and the Citizens Climate Lobby. Boise Youth Climate Summit. Photo credit: Jenny Wolf Dr. Peter Kalmus Jenn Ladino and Kayla Bordelon completed the final two community workshops in their IHC-sponsored series, “Our Changing Climate: Finding Common Ground Through Climate Fiction,” in Lewiston and Grangeville in May. Erin was thrilled to receive an invitation to participate in the American Fisheries Society conference in Spokane in August. Organizers of the “Advances in Endogenous Records with Connections to Indigenous Knowledge, Lands, and Waterways” panel sought out the Lab’s expertise in the uses of storytelling in science communication and practice. We featured the research of ENVS PhD students at two working lunches in the fall. In September, Sasha White introduced her creative project, First Aid Kit for the Fire-Prone, which investigates slippages of art, medicine and ecology in Oregon’s fire-prone landscapes; Phin Lampman shared his work in Leda Kobziar’s lab piloting drones equipped with various air samplers, meteorological sensors, and cameras for remote sensing over wildland fires. He even brought in a drone to show us! In November, Jack Kredell and Grace Pevin shared research projects on fire and water at the Taylor Wilderness Research Station, focusing on how environmental change and disturbance plays a critical role in determining scientific as well as personal attachments to landscape. upcoming 2023 events: In conjunction with the Prichard Art Gallery of the University of Idaho, we will host a three-part, juried online art exhibition series called Stories of Fire . This series is organized by Stacy Isenbarger, Sasha White, Megan Davis & North Bennett. Part one, Ground Truths , is scheduled to open online in early April 2023. past reports: 2021 2020 2019