I walk in Crosby Farm Park in St. Paul along the Minnesota River. I know I am a visitor. The bdote, the site of the Dakota origin story, is nearby. In recent years, seasonal flooding has been extreme. Trees that in earlier times hosted temporary puddles at their base have trunks under feet of water. Is this is a normal cycle or a prelude to more extreme changes?
Thoughts about knowing a place intimately, about history, nature and climate change are active as I walk and as I work in the studio. People tell me the work is beautiful, not an easy beauty but one that includes the fierceness of destruction, the cycle of decay and hopefully, replenishment. People also tell me that they use my work to ignite their memories, to revisit their own experiences along these or similar waters. In order to engage in protecting our wild places and the multiplicity of ways in which we know them, we need awe and pleasure alive within us.