sliding frantically in attempts to find balance. That afternoon’s details—the blue and green fleece hat I wore and the clear block shapes the ice made after we cut them with a shovel—lodged themselves permanently in my mind. They would, however, have been written differently and remembered differently by one who grew up knowing many iced afternoons in many permutations of hats, someone for whom snow was a part of the seasonal menu. Barry Lopez describes an exterior landscape that includes the geology, flora, fauna, and weather. In his essay “Landscape and Narrative,” he says each person is indelibly influenced by that exterior landscape. He believes that one’s sense of place and story is “deeply influenced by where on this earth one goes, the patterns one observes in nature.” I am from the West—California, specifically—and the places I call home are those I have fallen in love with. They stick in my memory as images or sounds: the dawn chorus of birds lifting up at sunrise over the Sierra Valley, the scent of sage heated by slanting winter sun in the mountains of Big Sur, the dark silhouettes of Joshua Trees pasted on a searing sky, an oak-lined hill covered, once, in snow. I have spent my years knowing a set of species, a topographical pattern, the seasons of a few places. I am a steward of those images—of the rocks and redwoods and birds of this coast—more than of any other. They have marked my mind with a ferocious permanence, one that influences my every action and thought.This is a love of a landscape that has touched me deeply, one that has seen me change, and one whose changes I know well. As such, I will always be that surprised child, watching a winter’s ice that seems to have come from somewhere else, from someone else’s story.
~Emilie Lyrgen
A comparison of Waterfire in Providence and Campfire in Kabale: A Nostalgic tale of black wattle Recently, I joined the rest of Providence City community to celebrate Waterfire. The occasion served as a reminder of a similar fortnightly event, Campfire, back home in the Kabale district of south-western Uganda in the early 1970’s. Waterfire attracts people of all ages who come to listen to ambient music played along the river banks and watch fires burning on pontoons in the middle of the river in Providence. Campfire mainly entertained white missionary priests 8
watershed