Spring Creek Podcast

This special edition of our Luminaries series focuses on creative work about watersheds. Today, in the final episode of these watershed-focused conversations, guest host Caitlin Scarano talks with Indigenous author and poet Rena Priest.  Rena served as the 6th Washington State Poet Laureate and is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including the 2024 Washington State Book Award, the...

This special edition of our Luminaries series focuses on creative work about watersheds. Today, in part three of these watershed-focused conversations, guest host Caitlin Scarano talks with Christian Murillo, an award-winning photographer. Christian has worked with National Geographic, Harvard University, and the Smithsonian in his journey to explore the simultaneous power and fragility of nature,...

Welcome back to the special edition of our Luminaries series that focuses on creative work about watersheds. Today, in part two of these watershed-focused conversations, guest host Caitlin Scarano talks with author and photographer Amy Gulick. Amy's images and stories have been featured in Smithsonian, Audubon, National Wildlife, Sierra, and Outdoor Photographer. Her award-winning books include Th...

W elcome to the first episode of a special four-part edition of our Luminaries series that focuses on creative work about watersheds. This special edition has been curated by Caitlin Scarano , a recipient of the 2024-25 Public Humanities Collaboratory Watershed Fellowship. Caitlin is a writer and poet whose current project explores cultural, political, and ecological interrelationships within the...

In the final episode of "The Art of Reconnection" series, co-host Daniela Naomi Molnar speaks with poet and ceremonialist Danielle Vogel about the scope, power, and possibility of language. Danielle is an experimental poet who is committed to an embodied, ceremonial approach to poetics and relies heavily on field research, cross-disciplinary studies, inter-species collaborations, and archives of a...

In part three of "The Art of Reconnection," series co-host Lee Running speaks with guest Ben Goldfarb to take us on an exploration of roads. Their conversation invites us to see these in-between places in new ways. Ben is a conservation journalist and award-winning author. His writing has appeared in many outlets, including The Atlantic, National Geographic, and "The Best American Science and Natu...

In part two of "The Art of Reconnection," series co-host Daniela Naomi Molnar speaks with guest Marcia Bjornerud about the narratives, notions of time, and deep wisdom embedded within rocks. Marcia is a writer and a structural geologist whose scientific research, which focuses on the physics of earthquakes and mountain building, has taken her around the globe. She is a contributing writer to The N...

In part one of "The Art of Reconnection" our series hosts,  Lee Emma Running and Daniela Naomi Molnar , engage in a rich conversation about the ways their place-based practices of artmaking have transformed the quality of attention they bring to a place and their appreciation for the deep memory that is carried by the botanical, animal, and mineral elements found there. Daniela is a poet, artist,...

Welcome to "The Art of Reconnection," a new podcast series produced by the Spring Creek Project, an initiative of the Patricia Valian Reser Center for the Creative Arts at Oregon State University. The series was created in collaboration with The Arts Center in Corvallis, Oregon.  During this four-part series, place-based artists Lee Running and Daniela Naomi Molnar invite us to imagine ways of res...

Because of unequal gender norms globally, women are impacted first and worst by climate change, and yet, one of the untold stories is how incredibly vital women are to local and global solutions. In this episode, Osprey Orielle Lake joins colleague Ashley Guardado to explore the ways in which empowering women worldwide is essential to climate justice work. Study after study shows that we must invo...

Where is the space for hope in a world where it is almost impossible not to feel hopeless and broken? In that "almost," argues journalist Diego Arguedas Ortiz. In this episode, Diego argues that climate hope is linked with action: both ours and that of others alongside us. He follows the case of climate journalism, which was traditionally a domain of science and environment reporters; now, it is p...

People often think that social movements emerge when people get so frustrated with the state of things that they cannot not act. They think that only people who really believe in the cause join social movements. And they think that social movements only have an impact when they change the hearts and minds of the public. In this episode, Francesca Polletta draws on research about social movements t...

In this episode, Aisha Shillingford invites us into a practice of imaginative world-building that involves thinking far into the future, deep intuition, and bold dreaming. She says we have the right and the responsibility to imagine another future, and what comes next depends on our ability to imagine. Aisha asks us to imagine not just changing our current system by knocking down what's not workin...

While we need urgent responses to climate breakdown, we will only make meaningful progress once we recognize that it is a symptom of a deeper underlying malaise affecting our society. Climate must be understood as one aspect of a multifaceted process of global ecological degradation caused by problematic characteristics of our socioeconomic system. In this episode, author Jeremy Lent explains how...

Today's "Luminaries" guest is Fred Swanson, a former research geologist with the USDA Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station, and a Senior Fellow of the Spring Creek Project. He is co-editor of the books "Forest Under Story: Creative Inquiry in an Old-Growth Forest" and "In the Blast Zone: Catastrophe and Renewal on Mount St. Helens." Fred has a deep history with the H.J. Andrews Exper...

In this episode, Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr. addresses the interconnected issues of climate change, poverty, economic injustice, and other social injustices affecting vulnerable communities. He explains that it takes collective organizing around the deeper problems of inequality to effectively address the climate crisis and he shares strategies the Hip Hop Caucus uses, including immersive storytellin...

In this episode, Peter Friederici explains that societal responses to climate breakdown have been closely tied to the dominance of large-scale narratives that promote passivity and inaction. Close examination shows that these narratives follow the structure of classical tragedy as they support the status quo and inhibit creative change. We can do better by instead exploring alternative storytellin...

Climate change often feels overwhelming, leaving us with a sense of despair. To move forward, we need positive visions of a clean, green, and just world — yet these depictions are often lacking. In this episode, Tory Stephens explores why collective visioning and hopeful climate storytelling is a useful tool to creating a better future for all. From his personal journey of skepticism to embracing...

Today's "Luminaries" guest is Brooke Kuhnhausen, a psychologist who deeply values creativity and collaboration as portals of transformation and imagination so vitally needed for new ways of being together and caring for our living Earth. She practices depth and relational therapy in her private practice and also trains and consults with other therapists, teaching in various graduate programs and t...

In this episode, Emily Johnston explains that the life we're living now isn't just on a collision course with Earth's limits; it's also historically abnormal in the extreme. How can we ensure that our social nature begins to work far more for a thriving world, than against one? Emily Johnston is an essayist (anthologized in "All We Can Save") and poet (" Her Animals "), as well as a co-founder of...

In this episode, Jennifer Atkinson explains that the age of climate consequences is upon us, and anxiety and despair are rising along with global temperatures. To successfully face the challenges ahead, we need to build more than solar panels and sea walls — we also need to build the emotional resilience to stay engaged in climate work over the long haul. She offers five key steps for navigating t...

Welcome to "Collective Climate Action: Inspired Organizing for Our Future," a speaker series produced by the Spring Creek Project at Oregon State University. This series includes talks from a wide range of speakers. They invite us to imagine a world that centers climate justice and inspire us to find our role in creating that future. We examine why collective action matters and how to find or rede...

Today's "Luminaries" guest is Robert Michael Pyle, a renowned environmental writer, conservation biologist, butterfly expert, and Guggenheim Fellow. Bob is the author of nearly 30 books, including "Sky Time in Gray's River," "Chasing Monarchs," "Butterflies of the Pacific Northwest, "and "Wintergreen," which received the John Burroughs Medal. During this episode, Bob shares how Ann Haymond Zwinger...

Today's "Luminaries" guest is Leah Wilson , a place-specific visual artist and writer. Leah's artwork is informed by physical engagement with the environment, keen observation, and a curiosity toward ecological research. Her art has been exhibited at galleries throughout the West Coast and her work is in public and private collections, including the Percent for Art Collection at Oregon State Unive...

Our inaugural guest on "Luminaries" is Kathleen Dean Moore , a climate activist, philosopher, celebrated environmental writer, and one of the co-founders of the Spring Creek Project. She co-edited the collection "Moral Ground: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril" and is the author of several books, including "Wild Comfort," "Holdfast," "Great Tide Rising," "Earth's Wild Music," and "Take Heart: E...