Jennifer Ladino, Erin James, and Teresa Cavazos Cohn are the Co-Founders of the Confluence Lab. Jennifer Ladino LAB CO-FOUNDER Professor, English Department University of Idaho jladino at uidaho.edu Erin James LAB CO-FOUNDER Professor, English Department University of Idaho ejames at uidaho.edu Teresa Cavazos Cohn LAB CO-FOUNDER Associate Professor, Department of Natural Resources & the Environment, University of New Hampshire; Climate Change Fellow, Harvard Divinity School teresa.cohn at unh.edu FELLOW IN RESIDENCE Environmental Humanities, University of Idaho, lhampton at uidaho.edu Leah Hampton's website Leah Hampton PRE-DOCTORAL FELLOW Doctoral Candidate , Environmental Science, University of Idaho Sasha Michelle White PROJECT AFFILIATE Regional Fire Specialist: Willamette Valley/North Cascades, OSU Extension Fire Program Kayla Bordelon GRADUATE RESEARCH ASSISTANT Doctoral Candidate, Environmental Science, University of Idaho Jack Kredell GRADUATE RESEARCH ASSISTANT Doctoral Candidate, College of Natural Resources, University of Idaho Phinehas Lampman Devin Becker PROJECT PARTNER Program Head Library, University of Idaho Devin Becker's website Ruby Fulton PROJECT PARTNER Composer and Musician Ruby Fulton's website Kristin Haltinner PROJECT PARTNER Associate Professor of Sociology, Director of the Academic Certificate in Diversity and Inclusion Jeffrey Hicke PROJECT PARTNER Professor of Geography, University of Idaho Stacy Isenbarger PROJECT PARTNER Mixed-media Artist Associate Professor of Art + Design , University of Idaho Stacy Isenbarger's website Benjamin James PROJECT PARTNER Clinical Assistant Professor, Film & TV studies, University of Idaho Leda Kobziar PROJECT PARTNER Associate Professor, Wildland Fire Science, Director, Master of Natural Resources Dilshani Sarathchandra PROJECT PARTNER Associate Professor of Sociology , University of Idaho Evan Williamson PROJECT PARTNER Digital Infrastructure Librarian, University of Idaho Evan Williamson's website RESEARCHER Creative Writer, Bellingham, WA North Bennett GRADUATE RESEARCH ASSISTANT MFA, Art + Design, University of Idaho Megan Davis website Megan Davis GRADUATE RESEARCH ASSISTANT MFA, English / Natural Resources, University of Idaho Kelsey Evans GRADUATE RESEARCH ASSISTANT MFA, English, University of Idaho Emily Holmes GRADUATE RESEARCH ASSISTANT MFA, English, University of Idaho Daniel Lurie GRADUATE RESEARCH ASSISTANT MFA, English, University of Idaho Isabel Marlens John Anderson AFFILIATED MEMBER Professor, Virtural Technology Lab Co-Manager, University of Idaho Bert Baumgaertner AFFILIATED MEMBER Associate Professor of Philosophy University of Idaho Kerri Clement AFFILIATED MEMBER Postdoctoral Fellow, History Department, University of Idaho Rob Ely AFFILIATED MEMBER Professor, Department of Mathematics and Statistical Science, University of Idaho Matthew Grindal AFFILIATED MEMBER Assistant Professor, Department of Culture, Society & Justice, University of Idaho Leontina Hormel AFFILIATED MEMBER Professor of Sociology University of Idaho Graham Hubbs AFFILIATED MEMBER Associate Professor of Philosophy, Chair of Politics and Philosophy, University of Idaho Ryan S. Lincoln AFFILIATED MEMBER Assistant Clinical Professor of Law, University of Idaho Markie McBrayer AFFILIATED MEMBER Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Idaho Ryanne Pilgeram AFFILIATED MEMBER Professor of Sociology, University of Idaho Aleta Quinn AFFILIATED MEMBER Assistant Professor of Philosophy, University of Idaho David Roon AFFILIATED MEMBER Clinical Assistant Professor of Ecology and Conservation Biology, University of Idaho Scott Slovic AFFILIATED MEMBER University Distinguished Professor of Environmental Humanities, University of Idaho Rochelle Smith AFFILIATED MEMBER Reference & Instruction Librarian, University of Idaho Alexandra Teague AFFILIATED MEMBER Associate Chair, Professor of English, Co-Director of Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies, University of Idaho Alexandra Teague's website Lee Vierling AFFILIATED MEMBER University Distinguished Professor, Director of the Environmental Science Program and Department Head, Natural Resources and Society, University of Idaho

projects LAB who we are The Confluence Lab engages in creative interdisciplinary research projects that bring together scholars in the arts, humanities, and sciences, together with community members, to engage in environmental issues impacting rural communities. Scan here to donate! Fire Humanities a book of original essays that launches an emergent interdisciplinary field Narrative Science training in narrative and emotional literacy for science practitioners Fire Lines: A Sto ries of Fire project nonfiction essay combining archives and original writing Stories of Fire: Pacifi c Northwest Cli mate Atlas community-sourced project that hopes to reimagine our shared wildfire story and future fire resilience Stories of Fire: Integrative STEM Learning through Participatory Narratives interdisciplinary project that explores personal narratives of wildland fire and informal STEM learning in rural Idaho Storying Extinction: Responding to the Loss of North Idaho’s Mountain Caribou deep map consisting of oral histories, trail camera footage, nonfiction essays, and historical documents Our Changing Climate: Finding Common Ground through Climate Fiction conversations about climate change in four Idaho communities Internship Program professional development opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students Artists-In-Fire residency an immersive residency for artists and writers Stories of Fire Online Exhibition Series visual artwork highlighting the manifold ways artists and designers are marking, mapping, and engaging with wildfire Where there is Smoke... crowd-sourced digital map that documents experiences of wildfire smoke in the Pacific Northwest and further afield Wilderness Suite: Music, Video, & Rephotography using science and art to explore the Frank Church River of No Return WIlderness Change in Frank Church Wilderness: Collaborative Rephotography using photographs and oral histories to understand change in the wilderness Nature and Nuance of Climate Change Perceptions understanding climate change perceptions and skepticism in Idaho, Washington, and Oregon

Fire Humanities Theory and Practice Establishing a new interdisciplinary field of study Initially funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities Contributors Include: Jenn Ladino and Erin James (editors) Karin Bolender Teresa Cavazos Cohn Nigel Clark Ashley Cordes Nick Earhart Gretel Evans Greg Garrard Jessica Horton Mica Jorgenson Gavin Kroeber Stephanie LeMenager David Lewis Brett Milligan Miriam Morrill Jesse Oak Taylor Lenya Quinn-Davidson Andreas Rutkauskas Emily Schlickman Jennie Sekanics Bruno Seraphim and Chook Chook Hillman Sasha Michelle White Fire Humanities is a book project, an interdisciplinary and multi-institutional collaboration, and the name of an emerging field of study. Growing out of collaborative projects in the Confluence Lab—most recently, a grant funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities , awarded in August of 2024 and defunded in April of 2025—the fire humanities takes as a foundational premise that learning to live well with more fire is not just a matter of educating people about preparedness or conducting more fuels reduction projects. We need to understand fire’s human dimensions. While fire science draws on quantitative data analysis, digital modeling, and remote sensing to predict fire behavior and ecological effects, the fire humanities add qualitative methods to fire research by foregrounding the dynamic historical, cultural, and aesthetic relationships humans have with fire. In an essay for the Fire Adapted Communities Learning Network , Sasha Michelle White coined the phrase “fire humanities” and explained that “reckoning with landscape fire means reckoning with cultural fuels as well as ecological ones. Effective fire adaptation will require that the cultural ‘fuel loads’—the stories, values, beliefs—and ‘fuel ladders’—the social networks, partnerships, and trust or lack thereof—that have contributed to the current wildfire crisis be examined, and that new ‘loads’ and ‘ladders,’ in which fire is recast as an ally and progenitor of community strength, be created.” Fire Humanities as a book project aims to both expose and shift the dominant paradigm that has fomented the current wildfire crisis, including the demonization of fire, the criminalization of Indigenous fire practices, and the preeminence of fire-phobic settler cultural values. We take several sets of questions to heart. The first set is about how humanities and arts practitioners can make the cultural dimensions of fire more legible, both exposing unhelpful representations and creating or amplifying better ones. We ask: How can the humanities and arts make legible the cultural dimensions of fire? How can humanities scholarship expose and challenge the violence(s)—historical and ongoing—related to fire? What narrative and aesthetic forms might be harnessed, amplified, or created to support more nuanced understandings of landscape fire, whether wild, prescribed, or cultural? The second set of questions demonstrates a commitment to being self-reflexive about our own disciplines and methodologies in the process. With that in mind, we ask: How does fire challenge the methodologies of humanities scholarship? What is humanities knowledge in a world increasingly understood as in crisis? How are our methodologies useful, and how do they need to change? How can humanist scholarship avoid re-inscribing dominant paradigms of fire, and how can western-trained and Indigenous scholars collaborate meaningfully? How might humanities knowledge and methods be enhanced by learning from practitioners who specialize in applied research and fieldwork, including “boots on the ground” fire scientists and fire practitioners? Fire Humanities project team members have shared our work-in-progress at the 2025 ASLE Conference, Penn State’s “Heat and the Humanities ” event and, most recently, a public panel discussion and conversation at the Burke Museum, in Seattle. We hope the book will be in print in 2027 and that this emerging field will continue to build momentum.

AIF crew 2024 Adam Huggins Galiano Island, BC, Canada Adam Huggins is an artist, podcaster, practitioner of ecological restoration, teacher, and naturalist living in the Salish Sea of southwestern British Columbia, on Galiano Island - the unceded lands and waters of Hul’qumi’num speaking people. As an environmental professional, he implements watershed-scale ecological restoration projects for the Galiano Conservancy Association and teaches a class in the Restoration of Natural Systems program at the University of Victoria. As a storyteller and musician, he produces and co-hosts the Future Ecologies podcast, which is currently wrapping up a 5th season of long-form audio pieces at the intersection of the human and more-than-human worlds. Out of the Green, Into the Black: A Journey into Cultural Fire Adam Huggins Cover art by Ale Silva for episode 6.9 of the Future Ecologies podcast I stand on the edge of the narrow, one-lane road, staring down a steep, brush-filled slope. Harsh sunlight filters down through the canopy of Douglas-fir, arbutus, and black oak, illuminating a dense tangle of hazel, bay, and huckleberry in the understory. I’m already sweating under the weight of my pack in my borrowed NOMEX clothing, shifting back and forth trying to break in a very expensive and uncomfortable new pair of thick-soled leather boots. “What’s your burn experience like?” asks the nearest crew member on the fire line. “None” I say. “This is my first time.” He nods and murmurs a polite response. I pause for a moment, adjusting my hardhat, and then venture, “I am amazed at how steep this site is, and how much material is still on the ground.” He grins. “Yeah, you’re like whoa, there’s a lot of fuels on the ground, and it’s steep.” “That’s my impression,” I say, eyeing the precipitous slope with mounting trepidation and thinking, ‘are we actually going to attempt to burn this today?’ “Yep.” He laughs, a twinkle in his eye. “Welcome to the Klamath!” CFMC Burn block for September 26, 2025, featuring thick underbrush on a very steep slope - - - This past September, I returned to the northwest corner of California for the first time in nearly a decade. I followed the Klamath River, liberated from the four dams that until recently blocked the passage of its once-famed salmon runs, from the arid steppe of southern Oregon down to the rugged coastal forests of Yurok territory. For three days, I would be a guest of the Yurok-led Cultural Fire Management Council, or CFMC (https://www.culturalfire.org/ ) as a representative of the Artists-In-Fire program, an artists residency created by the Confluence Lab at the University of Idaho (https://www.theconfluencelab.org/artists-in-fire-residency ). Months of wading through the online classes and field exercises required to become a ‘Wildland Firefighter Type II’ had brought me at last to that one-lane road perched narrowly above the river below. My goal: take part in a cultural burn, and document the experience for the Future Ecologies podcast (https://www.futureecologies.net/listen/fe-6-9-on-fire-out-of-the-green-into-the-black ). With a pulaski in one hand and a microphone in the other, I gathered my senses and steeled myself for the trial by fire to come. - - - A short distance away, the assembled crew of 30 awaits the lighting of the test fire. It’s an eclectic mix of Yurok elders, youth, and settlers, goofing around and relishing a bit of down time between the prep work and the burn itself. A hush falls over the group as Rick O’Rourke steps forward, holding a long bundle of aromatic silvery-green wormwood. We’re about to burn 2 acres of Rick’s family land. He lights the bundle and then brings it gently to the ground, igniting the dry oak leaves and fir needles that blanket the soil, murmuring a prayer: “Creator, we’re here to put fire on the ground in a good way. Please look after all of our people who are here to do your service. Help them heal our land, heal our people, bring back our animals, create balance. It’s an honour.” He takes a deep breath as the leaves begin to crackle and hiss, then turns around to face the crew. “It’s receptive!” A moment passes, and then one of the young Yurok crew members arches his back and lets loose a feral yelp. Soon, other members of the crew pitch in, releasing a chorus of fierce howls, guttural cries, and excited yips. As the collective catharsis comes to an end, we find our respective squad members and make our way down the seemingly near-vertical lines cut through the duff to give a boundary to the fire. The burn has begun. Rick O’Rourke offers a prayer as he lights the test fire on his family’s land - - - I have been periodically interviewing people involved in prescribed fire since 2018, and have had a keen interest in the topic since at least 2013. That was the year I lived on the Klamath, just upriver in Karuk territory, and was first exposed to the practice by my neighbors on Butler Flat after nervously witnessing the Orleans Complex fire consume over 20,000 acres, including a chunk of the remote rural town I was living in. But none of these conversations and experiences prepared me for the exhilaration of actually participating in a prescribed burn myself. Smoke over the Klamath River from the Orleans Complex Fire in July of 2013 That first day, the fuels are indeed receptive. As the flames quickly spread, the crew kicks into action, manning water lines and drip torches. I’m forced to drop my microphone as a hose is shoved into my hand, and I’m immediately in the thick of it, spraying water on a “catface” at the base of a venerable black oak, preventing the fire from entering the wound and harming the tree. A sign of my inexperience, black smoke kicks back into my face, clogging all of my senses at once and instantly demonstrating why firefighters often say “eating smoke” instead of “breathing smoke.” I’m forced into a hasty retreat, and a helping hand steps in to take my hose. On this crew, there’s always a teammate ready to step in when you can’t take the heat. After a few hot minutes, the fire settles into a gentle backing burn, creepingly slowly downhill in graceful arcs. Members of the firing team shuffle back and forth just below the trail of flame, mostly watching with satisfaction as it burns merrily away. Occasionally, they offer encouragement in the form of small dots of incandescent fuel from their drip torches. Along the top and sides of the burn, members of the holding team make sure the fire stays within the boundary, immediately snuffing out the few embers that manage to float across the fire line. I watch the flames consume a kinky hazelnut shrub, the leaves slowly curling and the bark blistering under the low-intensity fire. After the burn, as we move through the ashy landscape to wet down any remaining hot spots, Rick will explain that the blistering tells him they generated just the right intensity of fire to ensure that the hazel will resprout with long, straight shoots - perfect for weaving the baskets that the Yurok people are famous for. Beautiful, gentle backing fire consumes understory fuels but leaves trees unharmed - - - The reader may wonder, as I did, what distinguishes ‘cultural fire’ from ‘prescribed fire.’ In reality, they share many characteristics, but the key difference is that prescribed fire is typically applied by settler authorities and organizations to reduce fuel loads and achieve ecological objectives, while cultural fire is applied by Indigenous peoples to sustain a wide variety of cultural values, from improving habitat for game to restoring traditional oak prairies. Ideally, cultural fire and prescribed fire can be applied in concert at a landscape scale, allowing communities at the wildland-urban interface (or the ‘WUI’) to reduce the mounting risk of wildfires, improve the health and productivity of ecosystems, and uphold long-held cultural values. On the second day, as we shepherd the fire through the understory of a black oak woodland, I corner Annelia Norris with my microphone. She’s a Yurok basketweaver, and as we sit underneath a hazel bush, hypnotized by the fire, she tells me, “There are a lot more weavers coming along and coming up. And so there's a need for it, like we need to take care of our materials.” In reality, it takes a healthy cultural landscape to produce a single basket. Vigorous hazelnut shoots are joined by spruce root, maidenhair fern, and even porcupine quills to create a wide variety of functional pieces of art, from the open-weave baskets that cradle Yurok babies to the watertight baskets used for leaching tannins from acorns. She continues, “Our lands have seen trauma. Our people have seen trauma. So when you think about fire, it's cleansing, you know? It cleanses the land. And so when we're talking about healing this is very healing for us.” Beaked hazelnut (Corylus cornuta californica); inset shows blistering of bark at base of plant Later, I will speak with Yurok Elders who will reference the challenges that they and their ancestors faced through generations of fire suppression, when keeping traditional fire practices alive meant risking imprisonment or even death at the hands of agents of the Californian government. Today, their children are leading the way in restoring healing fire to their territory, and teaching anyone willing to lend a hand how to do so safely and effectively. Annelia concludes, “We've normalized the cultural burning. Like, we've really taken leadership in asserting ourselves and our culture and our land management. You know, it just started catching fire.” Annelia Norris stands on the fire line, separating the unburned ‘green’ from the ashy ‘black’ - - - At the end of three days, we had applied cultural fire to over 30 acres - an impressive feat. We would burn through the night into the early hours of the morning, the flames and starlight merging into conflagrations of stunning beauty. On the morning I was scheduled to leave, as an early fall deluge quenched the landscape, I woke up completely exhausted, with blistered feet and chapped hands, wishing that there had been time for just one more burn. As Rick had told me the day before, “Now you’re addicted and afflicted!” As I returned to my home on Galiano Island in the Salish Sea of western Canada, I reflected on just how similar the ecosystems I work in as a professional biologist are to those I helped to burn in California. We too enjoy a dense green canopy of Douglas-fir, arbutus, and scattered oak, with an understory of huckleberries, blackberries, and the occasional hazel. Our community also faces unprecedented fuel loads and an elevated risk of wildfire due to generations of fire suppression and a spiralling climate crisis. This land shares a long evolutionary history with fire and a rich cultural legacy of Coast Salish peoples burning to maintain camas prairies, oak woodlands, and village sites. Why then, are the Yurok and Karuk restoring fire to thousands of acres of their territories, while we wring our hands with worry at each escalating wildfire season, “eating” smoke as a staple of our diet for months during the summer drought? Why had I needed to travel south of the border for the opportunity to take the first steps in my fire journey? There are a variety of answers to these questions, manifesting as a series of cultural, ecological, and regulatory hurdles which must be approached to bring good fire back to small rural communities like mine. But my experience in Yurok territory showed me that these hurdles are not so high as they may seem. The CFMC started out 10 years ago as a volunteer effort by a rag-tag group of Knowledge Holders cobbling resources together, and now they’re a well-oiled professional unit employing dozens of community members. Over the winter, Joe Gilchrist of the Interior Salish Firekeepers made a tour of coastal British Columbia, stopping on Galiano Island to speak with me, my colleagues, and Indigenous community members. We stood together overlooking the Salish Sea, sharing stories and talking about bringing good fire home to the Salish Sea. Surveying the steep, brushy slope below, he looked at us and said, “Oh yes. You could definitely burn this.” After my time on the Klamath, I now knew it was possible. And I felt that, in good time, we would return fire to this place. As Annelia told me before I left, “This is our purpose. This is why we're here, and this is what we need to be doing.” The author, helping to extinguish the last remaining embers after the fire passes through QR Code for episode 6.9 of the Future Ecologies podcast Chat back to AIF residency Chat

featured artist Miriam H Morrill Vancouver, WA Miriam Morrill is a retired biologist and wildland fire management specialist. She spent most of her career working with communities and fire management agencies across the western United States helping them plan, prepare, and adapt to wildfires. In retirement, she developed an education program and guidebook about observing, journaling, and sketching the fire environment called Pyrosketchology . She lives full-time in a fifth-wheel trailer with her husband and two dogs, traveling and journaling about nature and fire. featured work Pyrosketchology is an approach for building awareness of the fire environment through observations, sketching and nature journaling practices. The book is intended as a guide to create deeper awareness and educational support for fire-adapted living. Miriam defines the fire environment as the mix of elements that influence fire combustion and behavior in the “natural” landscape. Weather, topography and fuels (vegetation) are the primary elements of the fire behavior triangle which is a large focus of her book, but she also includes broader topics of fire seasons, ignitions, mitigation, effects and regimes as a means to unfold the complexities and deeper understanding of fire. Each chapter of the book is available in a free PDF format that can be printed only for individual educational use. check out the full guide responding to SIGHTLINES I use artwork to express my feelings and connections to the world, while I create illustrations to understand and communicate information. Most importantly, I use a nature journaling practice to develop better observation skills, awareness, and understanding of the natural world around me. Weather, topography, and fuels are key focus areas for most of my journaling practices. explore pyrosketchology Various observational exercises, visual journaling prompts and sketching tips are available through Miriam's downloadable illustrated guide. Below are two found in found in Chapter 4: Fire Fuels. Leaf Flammability Burn Test An exercise you can use to compare moisture levels and flammability of live and dead fine fuels and or a mix of dead fine fuels in shaded and sunny areas is to gather several different leaves and do a flammability test. Make sure to do this exercise in an area cleared of all vegetation, on pavement, or in a classroom or laboratory setting. You should also have a bucket or container of water to drop the flaming leaves. I recommend using wooden matches and not a lighter or paper matches to provide a reasonable ignition source and test period. You should also have a stop watch and may want to have a a video camera on a tripod to record and observe the flame-lengths after you have observed and timed the ignition. The intent of the exercise is not burn the entire leaf, but to observe the differences between them. Step 1: Trace or sketch the outline of the leaf shape in your journal, but do not color it in. Step 2: Start the timer and video camera. Hold a match to the side of the leaf, until it ignites or for the extent that the match lasts. Observe how well each ignites and burns. Step 3: Record the timing it takes to ignite and burn and add the data next to the leaf outline in your journal. Add any other notes about flames and smoke. Step 4: Review the video and add any more observations missed during the test. Step 5: Sketch the approximate flames onto the leaf shape in your journal and color in the remaining leaf with any charred or unburned areas, showing color and texture differences. Tree Canopy Cover Observations For this observation, you need to look straight up between a group of trees that best represents the overall canopy cover in the area. In a tall forest, you may be able to use an empty toilet paper or paper towel roll to help focus your perspective. You could also create a stencil cutout from a piece of paper or put a circle on a clear piece of plastic. You should ideally take several measurements and obtain an average for the area. Use the canopy cover percentage and or associated descriptive term from the graphic. Sketch a small circle in your journal and use dots to represent the concentration of canopy cover. You can sketch the canopy cover by filling in the leaves, branches and tree trunks, if you’d like something more detailed. Don’t forget to add the percentage and descriptive term on or next to your diagram or sketch. Add additional notes and or measurements about the distance between tree canopies to build a sense of how a fire could move from one tree to another. Chat back to exhibition Chat

featured artist Kasia Ozga Greensboro, NC Kasia Ozga is a Polish-French-American sculptor and installation artist most recently based between Greensboro, NC and Saint-Étienne, France. She reuses, revalues, and reanimates mass-produced materials into unique artworks and inverts the associations made with different types of waste. Ozga is a former Kosciuszko Foundation Fellowship recipient, a Harriet Hale Woolley grantee from the Fondation des Etats-Unis, a Jerome Fellowship recipient at Franconia Sculpture Park, and a Paul-Louis Weiller award recipient from the French Académie des Beaux-Arts. Her work has been exhibited in over 15 different countries and she has participated widely in residencies in Europe and North America, including Shakers, Nekatoenea, Pépinières Européennes de Création, ACRE, and KHN. Currently an Assistant Professor of Sculpture at UNCG, Ozga holds a PhD from the University of Paris 8, an MFA from the Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, and a BFA from the SMFA at Tufts University, Boston. featured artwork "RE_MOVE N.22" batik, ink, and watercolor pencil on handmade paper, 2020 "RE_MOVE N.24" batik, ink, and watercolor pencil on handmade paper, 2020 responding to SIGHTLINES My work begins and ends in the human body. Our remnants (what we cast off and leave behind in the form of waste, trash, memory etc.) ground and connect us to the earth. My work asks where the things in our lives come from and where they go once we’ve used them. By representing and re-animating remains, I explore the potential of materials to ask questions and to evoke larger environmental relationships. I reuse and revalue ordinary and mass produced materials into something one-of-a-kind. The RE_MOVE series is the product of a transatlantic dialogue in image and text from 2019-2020 between myself and poet Dan Rosenberg. The images engage a batik process with materials reclaimed from multiple former and ongoing projects including handmade paper, architectural drawing templates, thread, and found pigments. Fire, and its effects on the built and natural environments from the Notre Dame Cathedral in France to forests in North America, is a recurring theme in the series. I have visited the Pacific Northwest several times over the past few years, primarily during the summer months. These trips have been marked by moments of wonder at the immense scale of the region's trees and open spaces and exhaustion from the intense thick smoke that blankets the region when forest fires are in abundance. From the stark rocky beaches of the Pacific Coast to primordial tree trunks at Olympic National Park to mountain meadows blooming for brief windows of opportunity near Mount Rainier to hazy orange skies at Glacier National Park, I am drawn to these places that reify the natural and invite me to question how we as a species shape our landscapes in the context of the Anthropocene. more from Kasia's perspective Photos taken by Kasia from a moving train in Glacier National Park in Montana during an extensive fire episode on the West Coast in 2021. Hazy skies have begun to appear earlier and earlier in the region, from year to year, as heat and particulate pollution increase. The acrid taste of warm thick air affects our lungs, but also our eyes, changing how we perceive the natural environment even in sites associated with pristine beauty and fresh, reinvigorating experiences for the body and mind. Chat back to exhibition Chat

our story Like many good stories, the story of The Confluence Lab starts with a road trip. In September of 2018, Jenn Ladino and Erin James travelled from Moscow, Idaho, to the Taft-Nicholson Center for the Environmental Humanities to share research and institutional strategies with a regional network of environmental humanities scholars. The Center, a branch campus of the University of Utah located in the Centennial Valley in Southern Montana, part of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, is a place of tensions. The campus is situated atop an abandoned ghost town that the university benefactors had exhumed and restored some years earlier. (We stayed in the cabin called “Jail,” with metal bars on the windows, which had been fully buried underground just a few years before.) It’s a wild enough location that grizzly protocol meant always walking in pairs, but where the closest neighbors, 8 miles down the road, are the powerful political activists the Koch brothers. Before we left, our geography colleague, Teresa Cavazos Cohn, had enigmatically warned us to “look out for the polar bear.” Now, this valley is home to elk, moose, and pronghorn, among other land-dwellers, and over 260 species of birds, including peregrine falcons, sand hill cranes, and trumpeter swans. But try as we might, we couldn’t spot any polar bears. That is, until we came across a pristine taxidermied full-sized adult polar bear in the living room of the house of the Center’s benefactor during a reception. We sipped cocktails as the bear loomed over us, chatting with the benefactor about wilderness and the changing nature of the American West while this preserved hypercarnivore stood frozen by our side. During the nine-hour car ride back to Moscow, our conversation kept coming back to the bear. For the benefactor, having the bear in her house made total sense—it was a symbol of what is disappearing from the pristine wilderness that she hopes the Center is protecting, a symbol of the emotions that she feels for this place. For Jenn and Erin, the bear helped us unpack the narratives of wilderness and “untouched” nature that still have sociopolitical impacts in the West and elsewhere in our increasingly divided country. Beyond our excitement at having solved Teresa’s treasure hunt, the polar bear was a powerful reminder of how a symbol can travel and stand in for emotions and stories that are often buried or unacknowledged. The whole experience got us thinking about the surprising yet productive ideas and occasions that get scholars collaborating outside of their comfortable disciplinary silos and outside of our institutions. We left the valley fired up to make things happen on our campus. In the car, we took turns driving and typing, drafting a mission statement (and an embarrassingly bad acronym) and an application for office space for what would soon become The Confluence Lab. We met with Teresa the week we got home, and the three of us excitedly hashed out ideas for public-facing, interdisciplinary work that would study, respond to, and potentially help to mitigate the divisive environmental and cultural issues of our home state of Idaho. The idea for The Confluence Lab was born.

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