I'd like to read some poems that come from an art and science
collaboration that I've been part of, again,
out of Oregon State University.
Some of you know about this project at the Andrews
Experimental Forest.
Philosopher Kathleen Dean Moore has
worked with the Earth scientist Fred
Swanson there to create a project that
works in partnership with their long-term ecological research
project, which is a National Science Foundation
project looking at ecosystem issues.
They helped to develop the Northwest Forest
Plan for a more sustainable way to manage the Northwest
forests, to protect the northern spotted owl.
Kathleen Moore had the idea that in addition
to scientific research, they wanted to have
a project called Reflections.
So they now have long-term ecological reflections,
in which they bring artists and writers into the forest--
and philosophers-- to go to the same sites
where scientists are doing their research, and sample
from those places, and produce their own work.
So I've been there--
I don't know, two or three times now.
And as a series of poems in this book
there are also a couple of essays
that came out of those visits.
The great thing about this project
is that the artists and writers are not
being brought in to simply illustrate the science,
like oh could you give us something catchy to get
the science across to people.
But the artists are being brought in as partners,
to stand in the same site, and to describe
in our own vocabulary informs what we're seeing.
The time horizon for the project is 200 years.
So for 200 years, writers are going
to be brought into this place.
They're going to produce whatever they produce.
It's going to become part of an archive that then will
be examined and evaluated from time to time
and finally somebody 200 years from now
will make sense of it all.
Why 200 years?
Because that is how long the time horizon is
for one of their classic studies,
the log decomposition study.
Where they have these 200-year-old Douglas firs.
It takes them 200 years to decay down until they're soil.
So Reflections is riding the same time train, so to speak.
So I'd like to read a few of the poems that came from my time
at the Andrews.
This first one you'll hear-- it's a short one--
you'll hear in it what happens when we go
and we hear the specialized diction that scientists use.
And it has all these wonderful musical properties.
"Forest Time."
Forest Road 1510 rises up the flank of Buck Mountain
into the zone of mist.
Road canted like a shelf fungus, though no roots hold it
in place.
Mountain works at softening its sides.
Wind throw, cut slope slide, hill slope slide, slump, gully,
and Earth flow its tools.
Work day, 10 million years long.