The way holidays like Labor Day, Veterans Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas are celebrated in the U.S. became an issue in the recent Democratic primary for governor of Wisconsin.
Both the Republican and Democratic establishment made much of old tweets on that subject by candidate Francesca Hong, who lost by fewer than 4,000 votes out of more than 750,000 cast.
The New York Times accused Hong of making holidays “political.”
As this review points out, the new book, “Make Holidays Your Own,” makes clear that holidays have always been political.
Each holiday comes with a story that reinforces a certain way of looking at our society, and that passes on certain values to the next generation. Some of those stories are out of date, incomplete, or inaccurate. They leave out many people in our communities. They distort or paper over uncomfortable aspects of our common history. And for many holidays, much of the original meaning or focus has been lost.
That’s why Make Holidays Your Own suggests ways to celebrate that are more meaningful, inclusive, historically accurate, and fun.
BOOKS
Avalon, Rise by Madeline ffitch (FSG). This novelist (who really does spell her last name that way) has an uncommon way with words and writes about unusual characters. In this book, she introduces us to food activists, anarchists, white nationalists, small-town librarians, social workers, and more.
Whistler by Ann Patchett (Harper). A woman in her fifties has had three fathers or stepfathers. One of them, who was divorced because he was gay, comes back into her life unexpectedly, forming a bond filled with kindness.
Drayton and Mackenzie by Alexander Starritt (Atlantic Monthly). A rambling novel tells the story of the friendship between two men. They start out working for the world’s largest consulting firm as it advises other companies on how to lay off employees. Then they start their own business that hopes to make a big dent in the world’s climate crisis.
Of Loss and Lavender by Sinan Antoon (Other Press). A novel by an Iraqi writer focuses on the lives of two refugees in the U.S. – one a retired doctor with Alzheimer’s and the other a deserter from the Iraqi army.
Tehran Diaries by Raha Nik-Andish (OR Books). Using a pseudonym for their own safety, an Iranian writer paints a picture of the people of Iran caught between three corrupt and violent regimes – the governments of the U.S., Israel, and Iran itself.
The Golden Fortress by Bill Lascher (Chicago Review). This fascinating history about the use of police against immigrants focuses on the 1930s when cops were deployed at checkpoints where other states bordered California. Their mission was to try to stop dust bowl refugees from the Midwest and South from entering the state. Anti-immigrant sentiment was whipped up by public officials and the news media by claiming that these refugees were mostly criminals rather than working people looking for a way to support their families. In some cases, the power structure in rural counties opposed the anti-immigrant campaign because ranchers and other wealthy interests depended on migrant labor.
Courage or Complicity by Steve Early and Suzanne Gordon (PM). Military veterans are often used as political props even as corporate profiteers push for privatization of the VA, increased spending for military contracts, and war and genocide abroad. This highly informative book shines a light on how veterans are treated and what many of them are doing to fight for justice for themselves and all working people.
Search Work edited by Rachel Meade Smith (OR Books). As corporate greed has reshaped the economy, looking for work has become a job in itself for more unemployed people, often with profound impacts on mental health and personal relationships. Many are unable to find jobs in the fields or at the levels for which they are trained. This anthology brings this phenomenon into the open, using personal testimonies, examples of job ads, and more.
Keep Going by Ellen David Friedman ((PM). A lifelong organizer provides insightful, readable advice, with stories that illustrate the points she makes. While the book is primarily about workplace organizing, much of it would be helpful to organizers on other issues as well.
Movements That Win by Aric McBay (Seven Stories). An experienced organizer shares stories about grassroots movements on issues like fossil fuel pipelines, Walmart’s impact on workers and communities, nuclear waste, and many more. A recurring theme is the importance of balancing the need to celebrate victories with the need to learn from each campaign and organize for the long haul.
The Anti-Defamation League and the Racial State by Emmaia Gelman (University of California). The ADL has long portrayed itself as the Jewish civil rights organization and the leader in the fight against antisemitism. This scholarly history documents the ADL’s role in helping the establishment to suppress Left movements that challenge capitalism, colonialism, military and police power, and genocide.
Three Roads by Joe Uehlein (PM). In this plain-talk memoir, Uehlein describes his evolution from labor leader to climate activist. He grew up in a union family in Ohio and got industrial and construction jobs, including helping to build the Three Mile Island nuclear plant. Later, he became a union organizer in the South and then a strategist taking on some of the world’s richest corporate magnates. As he became more aware of the climate crisis, he founded the Labor Network for Sustainability that tries to bring unions and environmentalists together.
Alaska Literary Field Guide edited by Marybeth Holleman, Nancy Lord, and Shaelene Grace Moler (Skipstone). You don’t have to be Alaskan to appreciate this homage to more than 90 species of animals, birds, trees, plants, and other beings as well as natural phenomena like the aurora borealis. The book skillfully combines scientific natural histories, artwork, and poetry.
FILMS
Madam President. A four-part PBS series from Iceland shows the lived experience that led Vigdís Finnbogadóttir in 1980 to successfully become the first woman democratically elected president of any country.
Lilith Fair. In 1997, singer Sarah McLachlan organized a series of concerts featuring women performers – a radical idea at the time that was met with great skepticism by those who ran the music industry. The tour, featuring such stars as the Indigo Girls, Tracy Chapman, Bonnie Raiit, Sheryl Crow, Missy Elliott, Fiona Apple, and many more, was a rousing success and raised more than $10 million for community nonprofits.
Charliebird. In this exceptionally well crafted and sad feature film, a woman in her early 30s works as a music therapist for children who may have terminal illnesses. When she is assigned to help a 17-year-old girl, each of them helps the other one grow.
Tailless. A Chilean wildlife photographer follows a Patagonian mountain lion born without a tail. The 24-minute documentary shows the human threats these animals face and how they can be protected through ranchers’ use of guard dogs.
Watchtower. A Turkish woman who has been left without good options by traumatic events not of her own making encounters a man who is working at a remote fire tower in an attempt to leave behind a tragedy of his own.
Peacock. In this German film, a man works for a business called MyCompanion that sends him out to pretend to be whatever the client wants, from a loyal son to a cultured boyfriend to the father a child never had. But eventually he begins to lose track of his own identity.
MUSIC
Devil Hills by Mary Hott. A 7th generation West Virginian sings about coal communities and the struggles they’ve been through.
Southern Man by RJ Chesney. Surprising poetry comes from a singer from the Deep South who says: “You don’t get to tell me how to protest, you don’t get to tell me when to kneel or when to stand. You don’t get to tell me who to love, and you don’t get to tell me how to be a southern man.”
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This column and photo were published in more than 30 newspapers, including the Miami Herald, Kansas City Star, Charlotte Observer, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Sacramento Bee, and many more.
By Matt Witt
While hiking in the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument in Siskiyou County near California’s northern border, I came across several colorful birds that were zipping around at high speed to gobble up flying insects.
I stopped for a while to enjoy these pink and green creatures and see if I could photograph them as they darted out of oak trees to surprise their prey.
But when I returned home to identify these birds, I got an unwelcome surprise of my own.
I learned that they are called “Lewis’s woodpeckers,” paying homage to Meriwether Lewis, a slave owner who was best known for co-leading the Lewis and Clark expedition in the 1800s.
The expedition he led played a key role in opening for expropriation the lands of this continent’s Indigenous people, or “savages,” as Lewis referred to them.
The U.S. president “has become your only father,” he told the tribal leaders who the expedition encountered.
Wondering why a bird species would be named after such a person, I learned that Lewis claimed to have “discovered” these birds even though they were known to Indigenous people for tens of thousands of years and were here on earth long before that.
I wasn’t thrilled by this name. And, apparently, I wasn’t alone in my dismay.
In November, the American Ornithological Society announced that it will be changing the names of Lewis’s woodpeckers and all other birds currently named after people.
That includes 152 species in the U.S. and Canada.
The change comes in response to a coalition called Bird Names for Birds that includes the American Birding Association and many local birding groups.
“It is a questionable premise that species should be named after specific humans at all, as if bird species were possessions or trophies,” said the AOS committee that recommended the new policy.
The AOS said it will involve the public to generate creative new names that reflect a bird species’ looks, calls or habits.
The committee noted that a large number of bird names that honor individual people were coined in the 1800s to pay tribute to “soldier scientists” traveling with the U.S. Army during the appropriation of Indigenous and Mexican lands.
By contrast, Indigenous communities already living in the West named birds, animals, peaks, rivers or other natural features in order to communicate something about their characteristics — not after individual tribal leaders or members.
Perhaps other agencies and organizations responsible for official names of natural features will now adopt that approach and follow the AOS’ lead.
The colorful woodpeckers I saw that day not only can snatch flying insects out of the air, but in the fall they also break acorns into pieces that they store in holes or cracks in trees for retrieval in winter when food is scarce.
I look forward to seeing them again on a future hike when they will have a new name — perhaps one that reflects their extraordinary survival skills.
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(This column syndicated by Writers on the Range was published in 28 newspapers in the West in April, 2022.)
By Matt Witt
Communities in the West can stand up to giant outside corporations if they want to win a renewable energy future, but it isn’t easy. They can do it only if they manage to agree about what they have in common.
That’s the lesson of a historic victory won by a rural Oregon coalition of ranchers and farmers, climate activists, Indigenous tribal leaders, and anglers and coastal residents.
The victory occurred in December, when a Canadian energy company called Pembina announced that it would halt plans to build a 230-mile pipeline crossing more than 400 waterways across rural southwestern Oregon. The pipeline was to carry fracked gas from the Rockies to a huge, proposed Coos Bay terminal on the West Coast, then on to Asia.
When the export project was first proposed years ago, the odds of stopping it appeared slim. Supporters included the state’s governor and its two U.S. senators – all Democrats – plus most of the Republican political establishment.
But community organizers didn’t give up.
“We were already seeing the disastrous effects of climate change throughout the West,” recalls Allie Rosenbluth, campaigns director of Rogue Climate, a grassroots group in southern Oregon. “The last thing we needed was another giant fossil-fuel project and another major fire hazard just to profit an outside corporation.”
As a group committed to organizing across political lines, Rogue Climate did systematic outreach to hundreds of landowners whose property would be affected, while also working with local environmental groups like Rogue Riverkeeper.
Many landowners were conservative ranchers and farmers, and they were angry about threats from the company: If they didn’t let the pipeline cross their land in return for a one-time payment, they were told the power of eminent domain would be invoked to impose it on them anyway. Congress granted this power to gas pipelines in 1947.
Over a seven-year period, the unlikely coalition that grew in strength turned out thousands of residents to public hearings and spurred more than 50,000 people to submit written comments to regulatory agencies. A delegation representing all parts of the coalition even held a sit-in in the governor’s office.
Seven rural landowners from across the political spectrum also published a column in the state’s largest newspaper, the Oregonian. It was blunt: “We are sick and tired of the pie-in-the-sky speculation by these for-profit corporations. We can’t build, we can’t plan, and we can’t sell if we choose because of the threat of eminent domain.”
Don Gentry, chair of the Klamath Tribes, said that the pipeline would “unearth long-buried ancestors and pulverize sites of cultural importance,” also “strip “shade from streams and pollute them with sediment, harming fish central to the Klamath’s traditions and way of life.”
Bill McCaffree, a lifelong Republican and longtime president of the local electrical workers union in Coos Bay, publicly disagreed with construction union leaders who wanted the short-term work for their members. He also said that most workers would come from outside the area.
“Everyone who works in the building and construction trades wants to build things that benefit communities and don’t cause harm,” McCaffree said. “Since I was a kid, there have been jobs here in Coos County from fishing, clamming and oyster farming. What would happen to those jobs when the bay is disturbed by construction and operation of this export terminal?”
A better strategy for creating good, stable jobs, McCaffree said, would be investing in energy efficiency and renewable energy development. That is “creating jobs at a rate 12 times faster than the rest of the U.S. economy,” he said.
In the wake of this broad and organized resistance, state agencies finally announced that the project failed to qualify for necessary permits. That led Pembina to tell federal regulators it was dropping the project.
The coalition didn’t stop with its victory. Members of the coalition convinced the Oregon legislature last year to pass bills to transition Oregon to 100 percent clean energy by 2040, provide $50 million for community-based resilience and renewable energy projects outside of Portland, reduce energy rates, and appropriate $10 million for energy-efficient home repairs for low-income households. The Legislature also banned any new fracked gas power plants in Oregon.
“Most of us who live in small towns and rural areas all want the same things,” said Rogue Climate’s Executive Director Hannah Sohl. “Good jobs, a healthy climate, communities that work for everyone. Even when big corporations have other plans, we can accomplish a lot when we talk to each other and organize.”
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This poem and bobcat photo were published April 3, 2023 by Piker Press.
Forgiveness
By Matt Witt
Forgiveness
of yourself or others
is the kind of cat
that shows up when it’s ready
and not when you call it.
If you feed it
and give it a
warm place to sleep
it will mostly stick around.
But now and then
it will disappear for a while,
and only come back
when and if it feels like it.
This article appeared in the third edition of Trouble magazine:
Going On a Lion Hunt
By Matt Witt
“Going on a lion hunt! But I’m not afraid! Cause I got my guns! And my bullets at my side!” – Scoutorama.com
“Going on a Lion Hunt” is a children’s activity used by Scout troops, summer camps, and others. I remember it from when I was a kid. Children get in a circle. The adult leader starts a call-and-response chant about going to hunt a lion. The kids call out that they are not afraid since they are bringing their guns on the hunt, and then they act out overcoming obstacles like muddy terrain, a river, a cave, and more.
“For those who long for rugged beauty unspoiled and untamed by man, Sycamore Canyon Wilderness is one of the few places in the Southwest that can lay claim to such a lack of man's accomplishments. This area is home to black bear and mountain lion as well as a number of less celebrated but just as notable creatures.” – U.S. Forest Service
One morning in the Sycamore Canyon Wilderness south of Flagstaff, Arizona, my brother, his son, and I encountered an older man in hunting clothes talking to someone by two-way radio.
Soon, we realized that the side of the hill ahead of us was crawling with hound dogs – running, sniffing, and baying.
At first, I was hesitant to approach the man. I live in Oregon, where armed men not long ago took over a national wildlife refuge for more than a month, trashed it, and threatened its employees, yet the leaders walked away scot free. The rural part of the state where I reside is increasingly plagued by armed groups that espouse a mixture of white male supremacy and hostility to public lands. Asking even innocent questions of strangers with guns could be a mistake.
But then again, the old man could be like a former neighbor of mine in rural Virginia. That neighbor hunted because he didn’t have a lot of extra money and counted on five deer per year as part of his household’s food supply. Although we didn’t hunt ourselves, we were willing to let that neighbor cross onto our land when he needed to fill his freezer.
So after a few minutes my brother and I asked this man what he was doing.
“Nothing gets the blood pumping more than coming up on hounds that have bayed or treed a mountain lion!” – Arizona Guided Hunts Outfitters
He said he was serving as the base for a group of men who were following ten hounds he had provided to them.
When he didn’t reveal more, I asked, “Are they tracking a mountain lion?”
“Correct,” he said.
When I asked how he knew the cougar was in the area, he said he had found a deer it had killed and eaten, and the dogs had followed the big cat’s scent from there.
We saw that he was closely monitoring a GPS device that received signals from transmitters attached to each dog so he could tell the men the hounds’ locations.
“Is the idea that the hounds will tree the cougar?” I asked.
“Correct,” he said.
If the hounds got close enough to the lion, ancient instinct would kick in from the time, long ago, when cougars had to fear packs of wolves. The terrified lion would climb a tree, knowing the hounds couldn’t do the same. Eventually, the men would arrive where the baying hounds were gathered and shoot the motionless cat at close range.
“I don’t know if we’ll get this one,” he said. “It’s a runner.”
“5 day Guided Mountain Lion Hunts are $5,000.00 per person. Weapon types can be archery, muzzleloader, centerfire rifle or centerfire handguns. Weapon choice is not as critical as other big game hunts.” – Arizona Guided Hunts Outfitters
“5 Days Any Legal Lion $5000. These hunts are conducted on side-by-side's or 4wheelers.” – Killer Lion Hunts Guides
It seemed the man wasn’t eager to share much more information, so we didn’t ask about the financial arrangement between him and the men who were following his dogs. But when I got home I searched online for the going rate. At $5,000 per person, this apparently is not a hobby for the Walmart worker who makes $11 an hour, or for teachers or health care workers or Uber drivers or anyone else who lives on a budget.
“Mountain lion hunting is meeting the Department’s management objective of… providing recreational opportunities for 6,000 hunters per year.” – Arizona Game and Fish Department
“As long as the mountain lion hunters are walking into the wilderness and are not using any mechanized form of transportation and no motorized equipment, they are legal under the Wilderness Act.” – U.S. Forest Service
According to the Arizona Game and Fish Department, “About 850 livestock operators presently graze 56,000 cattle on public lands in Arizona.” But protecting ranchers’ profits isn’t a significant reason for killing mountain lions. Only an average of 27 of the big cats are killed in Arizona each year because a rancher claimed a case of “cattle depredation” – less than one-thirteenth of the average annual “harvest” of lions in that state by “hunters” seeking “recreational opportunities.”
“Trophy hunters have killed approximately 29,000 lions in the U.S. in the last decade.” – Humane Society Report, “Cecil 2,” 2016
“Since 1890, there have been 29 fatal attacks by mountain lions on humans in North America.” – Arizona Game and Fish Department
My brother, his son, and I left the old man and continued hiking. We could still hear the hounds’ baying and see their movements. I wondered if this might be my long-awaited chance to see a mountain lion. A few years ago, I came across fresh prints in newly fallen snow not far from my Oregon home. And my son and daughter-in-law saw one calmly walking through the woods only a couple hundred yards from our house. But I never have had that good fortune.
I found myself imagining the big cat racing across this Arizona trail in front of us, and wondered if we would try to use our hiking poles to fend off the dogs long enough for the cougar to escape, and what sort of confrontation that might create with the gunmen. That didn’t happen, of course, as the lion seemed to be getting away without our help.
During our time in the area, we climbed to the top of massive red rock formations caused by powerful natural forces over millions of years.
We walked on an iced-over stream that reflected reds and yellows coming from steep and narrow canyon walls.
We trekked for miles through clumps of giant old trees – pinyon, alligator bark juniper, oak, sycamore, and more – and wondered what will happen to them and other living things there as the climate continues to get hotter and drier.
“The southwestern United States is expected to become more prone to droughts with climate change. The resulting loss of vegetation will not only impact herbivores like mule deer; their main predator, mountain lions, might take an even larger hit.” – NASA
In our visit to red-rock wilderness we had gone on our own kind of hunt. But contrary to the old kids’ game, we were afraid – not of the lion, but for our common future.
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This photo and text were published by New Verse News on Dec. 16, 2020:
NEW START
By Matt Witt
It used to be
that if you walked along Bear Creek
that runs next to town
you could see the stream
only in a few moments
because the view was blocked
by brambles of highly flammable blackberries
and tangles of branches.
Then this summer’s inferno
burned everything to ash,
clearing out the old understory
and leaving only a sprinkling of
charred tree trunks,
like ghosts from the past.
Now you can walk freely
across cleared black ground
and see how the stream community works,
the side creeks feeding it,
the ducks and coots and geese
finding food and
shelter from predators.
It used to be
that if you walked through town
you could see the money stream
only in a few moments
because the view was blocked
by fairy tales about
rugged individuals and
the generosity of the rich
without ever asking
who all that wealth was
taken from.
Then the fire burned everything to ash,
leaving those who could least afford it
to scramble for survival
while developers and bankers met
to discuss how they might profit
by grabbing up the close-in valuable land
and moving “their” workers,
many with brown skin,
to the valley’s outskirts,
all in the name of charity.
Now you can see
how money and power flow
from bottom to top
filling giant pools for a few
with not much left to trickle down.
Along Bear Creek,
just weeks after the fire,
small sprouts of green
bring the possibility of
a new community
better than the old
with each plant and bird and animal
doing its part.
In town,
new sprouts of community
are taking root too
as people work together
to make sure everyone has
food and shelter and hope
and to ask what we can do
so what grows back
will be better for all of us,
now that we can see.
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The following was published Sept. 16, 2020 by New Verse News.
The Executioner's Face
By Matt Witt
We load the car --
two sets of clothes and
a lifetime of memories --
as skyscraper flames are destroying
hundreds of homes of
friends and neighbors
a mile away.
Did they get out in time?
And then what?
We hit the back roads,
searching for safety,
with Bob Dylan howling through car speakers:
"The soles of my feet,
I swear they're burning."
Decades of reports said
this was coming
without climate action.
"Hotter temperatures."
"Disappearing snowpack."
"More frequent and more intense fires."
"Urgent transition needed to solar."
"Rapid investment in energy efficiency."
We can already picture
the photos the media will feed us
of some scraggly guy with stringy hair
who may have dropped a match --
with headlines: “What caused the fire?”
There will be no photos of
corporate lobbyists
whose puppets for years said
let's double down on what got us here
or who gave us half measures
and asked for applause.
We drive through the smoke,
community destroyed,
and now Dylan’s voice is sounding more desperate:
"The executioner's face,” he wails,
“is always well hidden."
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This poem and photo appeared in the third edition of Trouble magazine:
Legacy
By Matt Witt
Alone
trying to find my way up
with no trail
no footprints to follow
just snow
Through woods of firs and hemlocks
climbing steep open spaces
that would be meadows in summer
but now are huge white expanses
too cold to melt
Higher
a whitebark pine
alone
sticking out of the snow
After three miles
the Crater Lake rim
formed by a volcano
thousands of years ago
The lake
a caldera
twenty square miles
winter blue
Frigid wind
cornices of unsupported snow
one wrong step
into the water
two thousand feet below
and almost two thousand feet deep
To the left
a massive peak
named by white men
for a president’s son
To the right
another
named for a federal agent
who annihilated native people
Peaks named as if this place
is a monument
to their legacy
This place
that was here
long before us
and will be here
long after we
melt away
like the snow
I am standing on
Back then
average snowfall
was nearly twice
what it is now
and the lake and air
were many degrees cooler
Habitat for
furry pikas
whitebark pines
and gray-crowned rosy finches
already in danger
and that’s just the beginning
Our legacy
what to name it?
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This poem and photo were published by New Verse News on May 27, 2021.
MIGRANT
By Matt Witt
By Matt Witt
It was 8:30 p.m. on a late July evening in the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness when an hour-long barrage of one-inch hailstones finally stopped pounding my tent above Native Lake.
The lightning, which had been so close I couldn’t finish saying “one, one thousand” before thunder boomed, had finally moved about five miles away.
Hearing only a slight drizzle, I grabbed my camera and crawled out of the tent. The light was low, but pink sunset clouds were still reflecting in nearby tarns that were surrounded by the newly fallen hail.
In the other direction, dense clouds and the lake itself were glowing with the most vibrant purple I’d ever seen.
This scene was just one of the highlights of nine days I spent as an Artist in Residence for the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness Foundation (ABWF) this past summer.
In partnership with the U.S. Forest Service, ABWF sponsors several Artists in Residence each summer to spend seven to ten days in the wilderness, drawing inspiration from the beauty and solitude for their painting, writing, musical compositions, or other work.
For me, the artist residency in an ecosystem very different than where I live in rural Oregon gave me unusual opportunities to apply my “Closer to Nature” approach to photography, focusing in on simple details and uncluttered images in an attempt to see nature’s beauty with fresh eyes.
I photographed a sandhill crane silhouetted against a dramatic yellow sunset.
An intensely yellow-orange lily flower was reflected in a lake.
A rainbow appeared above trees colored with red sunset light.
Textures caught my eye on big boulders that I later learned were fossilized coral.
I had a relatively rare encounter with a pika and photographed a lone whitebark pine – both species in jeopardy as climate change threatens the cold environments they require.
As a follow-up to this artist residency, I’m now sharing these and many other images with ABWF to use in its educational work promoting and maintaining wilderness, as well as posting them for the public at MattWittPhotography.com.
With the high-altitude weather sometimes turning harsh, and no one else around for much of the time, I had plenty of time to think about the people who survived in this wilderness for thousands of years without having a car at a trailhead or housing to go back to with electricity and heat. Given how much time most of us spend sheltered by those comforts, it seems more important than ever to protect wilderness and all the living things that depend on it.
This summer, two other artists took part in ABWF’s program. One was Stephanie Rose (StephanieRoseArtist.com), a painter who used a Forest Service cabin as a her base of operations.
“I painted a collection of field studies, each of which seared into my memory my impressions of a particular place,” Rose said. “I will use these field studies to grow paintings in the studio, where I am able to further distill the motif I want to communicate to other people.”
The other was Marc Beaudin (CrowVoice.com), a poet and theater artist who worked from a remote Forest Service cabin up the Boulder River south of Big Timber.
“I finished a manuscript of poetry called Life List, where each poem honors a different bird species that has made an impact on my life and writing,” Beaudin said. “Having several days and nights without electricity, and all the disruptive technologies that come with it, meant there was nothing to take me away from my work, and having the power and beauty of the mountains, forest and river around me meant constant inspiration to keep at it.”
This was the sixth year the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness Foundation has operated its Artist in Residence Program, according to David Kallenbach, ABWF’s executive director.
“I’ve been astounded by how many people have found out about the opportunity and by the diverse qualities of the artists who have participated in the program – from a videographer to a paper-making artist to a composer, as well as painters, writers, and poets,” Kallenbach said.
To learn more about the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness Foundation and how to get involved in its many volunteer opportunities, see ABWilderness.org.
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TIC TAC TOE
By Matt Witt
As a child
I played tic tac toe.
Should I go here,
or should I go there?
Then I learned:
you never win
if the other person goes first
with an X in
the middle square.
Olivia tells the city council
she and her son
had to move three times
after rent increases
left nothing to spare.
She works at Walmart
but after the rent
the paycheck covers only
food and bus fare.
Frank, who builds expensive homes
and has fifty rental units,
tells the council he would love to
help people like her,
he really would,
but prices are
whatever the market will bear.
Profit first.
The X in the middle square.
Face to Face with a Bull Elk in the Redwoods
By Matt Witt
There I was, with no sign of an impending encounter with a bull elk, as I hiked the remote and deserted Friendship Ridge Trail in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park south of Crescent City before Labor Day.
As I walked through the giant trees, I was thinking about the fact that while redwoods can be more than 300 feet tall, they have very shallow root systems. The reason they can withstand strong winds or floods is that the roots of many trees in a grove are intertwined. They are like many communities in nature, I thought – they are stronger together.
My thoughts were interrupted, though, by seeing fresh elk scat along the trail. This put me on alert because it was rutting season, when Roosevelt bull elk can be particularly aggressive.
I came around a corner, and there stood a young bull elk, twice the size of local deer, its impressive antlers towering above me, eating foliage from the side of the trail.
He looked at me with interest, but when I stopped, he went back to grazing, showing neither aggression nor fear.
The slope the trail cut through was too steep and dense for me to be able to go around, so I decided to wait, and to take photographs in the meantime. Surely, he would leave the trail to go up or down the slope, opening the way for me to pass.
No such luck. He liked having his feet on a flat trail. He ate. And ate. And ate.
Growing impatient, I decided to see what would happen if I cautiously took some steps toward him, but anytime I did, he turned his 850-pound body to face me. Not wanting to be one of those fools you see in the news who provoked a wild animal by encroaching on its space, I backed up again.
Soon after, he decided to stop eating and chew his cud – to regurgitate some of what he had eaten back into his mouth for a second chew.
So he lay down – right in the trail -- to do so. And chewed. And chewed. And chewed.
By now, an hour had passed. I had planned to complete a 7.5-mile loop through the redwoods to the coast and past several big waterfalls. I had no intention of going back and no way to go forward.
Just then, two people appeared. We eventually discovered that if the three of us stood side by side and walked slowly toward the elk, he would turn away and slowly walk along the trail in the direction we were trying to go. For the next mile and a half, the three of us walked together, with the elk leading the way. The three of us, apparently, were a little like the redwoods – we were stronger and stood taller as a group than as one alone.
Once the elk finally left us and the two other hikers went on their way, I went back to marveling at this species of tree that has been on earth for at least 240 million years. Ninety-six percent of the original old growth has been logged, and climate change now threatens what’s left. I could only hope that the cathedral-like feeling I was experiencing – and perhaps quirky encounters with Roosevelt elk – will be there for future generations.
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MILEAGE
By Matt Witt
A long-haul trucker’s got his shiny red rig parked
on an early Wednesday morning
off Highway 395 in remote eastern Oregon
at a wildlife area at the edge of Lake Abert
where the few tourists that pass by
might stop to snap a scenic picture with their phones
and move on.
Ever since GPS technology came in,
the company knows where he is
every minute of every trip –
exactly where he stopped
and for how long
(after all, how long does a person need
to eat breakfast or make a bathroom stop?)
But GPS doesn’t know everything,
and neither does the company.
They know that he stopped
a regulation amount of time to sleep
in that cramped compartment behind the cab.
They don’t know that he walked
along the curving shore
in his t-shirt that used to be white
and watched the young sun light up
the ridges in the salt-covered mud.
They don’t know that he saw
silver bands of seepage
trying to snake their way
from the bottom of the hill
out to the little bit of actual water
way out in the middle
of the mostly dried-up lakebed.
They don’t know that he thought,
despite himself,
about all the climate change
he wishes he did not see
everywhere he drives.
They don’t know that he climbed
a little ways up the hill behind
so he could see how the water appeared
out of focus and dreamy
with reds, oranges, and yellows
as the fast-moving clouds
kept changing the light.
They don’t know that he sat
for a few minutes
in the silence
doing absolutely nothing
except watching the geese
waddle away from him
like they used to do
at the marsh outside of town
when he was a boy.
In a few days
he will pull that shiny red rig
into the company terminal
and the records will show
that he got as much mileage
out of this trip
as he could,
and that he never wasted
even a single moment.
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