WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.330 align:middle line:90% 00:00:01.330 --> 00:00:01.830 align:middle line:90% Language. 00:00:01.830 --> 00:00:04.480 align:middle line:90% 00:00:04.480 --> 00:00:10.560 align:middle line:84% Silence is one part of speech, the war cry of wind. 00:00:10.560 --> 00:00:14.230 align:middle line:90% Down a mountain pass, another. 00:00:14.230 --> 00:00:19.540 align:middle line:84% A stranger's voice echoing through lonely valleys. 00:00:19.540 --> 00:00:26.030 align:middle line:84% A lover's voice rising so close it's your own tongue. 00:00:26.030 --> 00:00:29.360 align:middle line:84% These are keys to cipher, the way 00:00:29.360 --> 00:00:33.260 align:middle line:84% the high hawk's key unlocks the throat of the sky 00:00:33.260 --> 00:00:36.980 align:middle line:84% and the coyote's yip knocks it shut. 00:00:36.980 --> 00:00:40.280 align:middle line:84% The way the aspen's bells conform to the breeze 00:00:40.280 --> 00:00:46.210 align:middle line:84% while the rapid's drum defines resistance. 00:00:46.210 --> 00:00:53.110 align:middle line:84% Sage speaks with one voice, pinyon with another. 00:00:53.110 --> 00:00:58.180 align:middle line:84% Rock, wind her hand and water her brush, 00:00:58.180 --> 00:01:02.470 align:middle line:84% spells and then scatters her demands. 00:01:02.470 --> 00:01:07.030 align:middle line:84% Some notes tear and pebble our paths. 00:01:07.030 --> 00:01:13.720 align:middle line:84% Some notes gather the bank we map our lives around. 00:01:13.720 --> 00:01:16.770 align:middle line:90% 00:01:16.770 --> 00:01:20.700 align:middle line:84% That's the first poem of my very first book. 00:01:20.700 --> 00:01:24.780 align:middle line:84% It is, as I hope you hear, a celebration of the landscape 00:01:24.780 --> 00:01:27.510 align:middle line:90% that gave me language. 00:01:27.510 --> 00:01:32.220 align:middle line:84% It is also, as you may hear, if you know the circumstances 00:01:32.220 --> 00:01:35.610 align:middle line:84% in California, many of which we saw today 00:01:35.610 --> 00:01:38.850 align:middle line:84% in Gregg's presentation, it's a landscape 00:01:38.850 --> 00:01:44.520 align:middle line:84% that is imperiled by development, by sudden oak 00:01:44.520 --> 00:01:47.220 align:middle line:84% death and other botanical diseases, 00:01:47.220 --> 00:01:54.570 align:middle line:84% by acreage eradicating wild fires, and much more. 00:01:54.570 --> 00:01:58.290 align:middle line:84% A quick tour of the web triggered by the search terms 00:01:58.290 --> 00:02:03.060 align:middle line:84% climate change and chaparral got me 00:02:03.060 --> 00:02:06.360 align:middle line:84% to the website of the California Chaparral Institute 00:02:06.360 --> 00:02:10.979 align:middle line:84% and a page called Threats to Chaparral California Climate 00:02:10.979 --> 00:02:14.580 align:middle line:90% Change HTML. 00:02:14.580 --> 00:02:18.180 align:middle line:84% From that site, I either learned or was 00:02:18.180 --> 00:02:25.110 align:middle line:84% reminded that the recent drought in California 00:02:25.110 --> 00:02:31.640 align:middle line:90% is the worst in 1,200 years. 00:02:31.640 --> 00:02:36.710 align:middle line:84% That according to Dr. Michael McGinnis, one consequence 00:02:36.710 --> 00:02:38.750 align:middle line:84% of climate disturbance in California 00:02:38.750 --> 00:02:42.845 align:middle line:84% will be a shift of biodiversity to the North, Oregon. 00:02:42.845 --> 00:02:46.250 align:middle line:90% 00:02:46.250 --> 00:02:49.040 align:middle line:84% Scientists from the US Geological Survey 00:02:49.040 --> 00:02:51.890 align:middle line:84% developed the coastal vulnerability index 00:02:51.890 --> 00:02:54.980 align:middle line:84% to assess the physical vulnerability of the California 00:02:54.980 --> 00:02:55.650 align:middle line:90% coast. 00:02:55.650 --> 00:02:59.600 align:middle line:84% They found that, from San Luis Obispo to the Mexican border, 00:02:59.600 --> 00:03:04.160 align:middle line:84% communities along the coastline have high or very high 00:03:04.160 --> 00:03:08.400 align:middle line:90% vulnerability to climate change. 00:03:08.400 --> 00:03:11.930 align:middle line:84% And I learned, or was reminded, that conservationist 00:03:11.930 --> 00:03:15.260 align:middle line:84% organizations are asking land management and land development 00:03:15.260 --> 00:03:19.820 align:middle line:84% organizations to please stop contributing to climate change 00:03:19.820 --> 00:03:22.700 align:middle line:84% by grinding up chaparral, salvaged logging 00:03:22.700 --> 00:03:24.980 align:middle line:84% public forests, and clearing habitat 00:03:24.980 --> 00:03:26.900 align:middle line:90% in the name of fire protection. 00:03:26.900 --> 00:03:29.720 align:middle line:84% Instead, use the best available science 00:03:29.720 --> 00:03:33.500 align:middle line:84% to focus on what matters most, reducing the risk 00:03:33.500 --> 00:03:37.130 align:middle line:90% within communities themselves. 00:03:37.130 --> 00:03:40.340 align:middle line:84% In the slide that Greg put up, there 00:03:40.340 --> 00:03:43.160 align:middle line:84% were all these, like, big wildfires that 00:03:43.160 --> 00:03:45.050 align:middle line:84% have happened recently, and a bunch of them 00:03:45.050 --> 00:03:46.940 align:middle line:84% were in California, and then one of them 00:03:46.940 --> 00:03:50.060 align:middle line:84% that was also in that sort of exponentially massive scale 00:03:50.060 --> 00:03:52.280 align:middle line:84% was the Horsetooth fire number two, 00:03:52.280 --> 00:03:55.940 align:middle line:90% which is in my new backyard. 00:03:55.940 --> 00:03:58.730 align:middle line:84% My imagination is surrounded, right? 00:03:58.730 --> 00:04:00.980 align:middle line:84% It's kind of threatened at all times, 00:04:00.980 --> 00:04:02.660 align:middle line:84% these places that I want to call home 00:04:02.660 --> 00:04:05.270 align:middle line:90% and that I want to call safe. 00:04:05.270 --> 00:04:08.390 align:middle line:84% There's a lot of information and very little of it 00:04:08.390 --> 00:04:10.620 align:middle line:90% sounds like poetry. 00:04:10.620 --> 00:04:12.260 align:middle line:84% And this is part of what I'm thinking 00:04:12.260 --> 00:04:15.000 align:middle line:84% about these days, part of what I'm thinking about tonight. 00:04:15.000 --> 00:04:17.570 align:middle line:84% Part of what I'm thinking about is the number 00:04:17.570 --> 00:04:21.740 align:middle line:84% of creative writing students, five in the past five days, 00:04:21.740 --> 00:04:24.410 align:middle line:84% who have told me that they find themselves needing 00:04:24.410 --> 00:04:31.190 align:middle line:84% to completely reconsider their writing projects in light 00:04:31.190 --> 00:04:34.220 align:middle line:90% of the election last Tuesday. 00:04:34.220 --> 00:04:36.350 align:middle line:84% These students believe that their writing needs 00:04:36.350 --> 00:04:40.100 align:middle line:84% to matter now more than ever, and that perhaps it 00:04:40.100 --> 00:04:42.140 align:middle line:84% needs to matter in different ways 00:04:42.140 --> 00:04:45.050 align:middle line:90% than it used to need to matter. 00:04:45.050 --> 00:04:47.330 align:middle line:84% They believe that something is at stake 00:04:47.330 --> 00:04:53.660 align:middle line:84% that they hadn't realized was quite such a problem. 00:04:53.660 --> 00:04:56.660 align:middle line:84% They didn't realize how extensively they 00:04:56.660 --> 00:05:02.390 align:middle line:84% might be in jeopardy, as it now appears their future might be. 00:05:02.390 --> 00:05:05.090 align:middle line:90% And of course, they're correct. 00:05:05.090 --> 00:05:08.810 align:middle line:84% And of course, in some ways they're 00:05:08.810 --> 00:05:11.480 align:middle line:90% also not correct, right? 00:05:11.480 --> 00:05:14.827 align:middle line:84% Our lives change, and they also don't. 00:05:14.827 --> 00:05:15.327 align:middle line:90%