Clare Consultation, LLCStanding in Wildfire
Yesterday, my husband Gary and I began a drive to Montana. We live there parts of the year. Just outside a really small community tucked into muscular folds of the Intermountain West. With water and trees, with big mammals like Elk, Moose and Bear – with Eagles and Hawks, and this past spring, with a mama hummingbird nested just outside our window. It was early when we left Portland – the place… Read More
A Heatwave of Independence
For three weeks plus, temperatures in Portland, Oregon have been above 90°. There has been no rain since June 1. I find myself longing for Slip&Slides, for Mr. Wiggle (video link for those who’ve forgotten – and for those who may have never known) – and resorting instead to random sidesteps into the spray of lawn sprinklers. In Portland, and all across the Pacific Northwest, June has generally been a mostly rainy month. … Read More
Speaking Earth Day
Yesterday, Gary and I spent the day with a small group of people investigating grief. It was a rich, intelligent, and healing time. We call the workshop The Nature of Grief. And, in it, we weave together Gary’s storytelling and literary acumen with my knowledge of psychology and education applied to emotional, mental and spiritual health. It’s good work. We can tell by the responses of the people who join us –… Read More
Cycles – Variation on an Easter Blog
Last week I had the great opportunity to be in Yellowstone – the first National Park in the world. Yellowstone stands out for loads of reasons – but recently I’ve learned another feature of its distinction. The park makes up over 20% of the largest generally intact ecosystem in our planet’s temperate zone. All of these are fun facts. But the realities that support them have gained particular significance to me from working alongside… Read More
Re: My Profession’s Role in Torture
I’m a professor of psychological and cultural studies. Gary Snyder is a poet and essayist. In an interview in the Paris Review, Snyder spoke of writing as his work. He spoke about integrity – in his work as a writer, and to my mind, immediately relevant to my profession – Psychology. This is what Snyder’s interviewer asked: You’ve written, “Changing the filter, wiping noses, going to meetings, picking up around the house, washing… Read More
Today with my Buddy, Wild Nature
Gary and I are on the road between Rexburg, Idaho and Portland, Oregon. Powdery fingers of snow insist on whispering across I 84 and, because of forecast warnings, we’re in close touch with Oregon family and friends to monitor this mid-November storm. This matters particularly today because we’re supposed to be on Hawthorne Avenue at Powell’s Books this evening. That alongside informed rumors of snow and ice that threaten to take hold… Read More
A Great Indigenous Leader Honored with a Public Award
Late yesterday, the longstanding and visionary environmental organization, Ecotrust, announced this year’s awardees for the Indigenous Leadership Award. Among the five leaders named is Roy Hunter Sampsel, my dear friend and mentor. What well-deserved recognition. This man is a giant of leadership! I had a nagging sense of incongruence when my first move to announce how thrilled I am with this news was to put it on facebook – but such is… Read More
In the Presence of a Great Gray Owl
I just sent email to children I met in North Carolina last week. They live in an enormous old house right in the middle of the Smoky Mountains. They run around the house, its sprawling porches and every inch of the generous land that surrounds it. They are learning with every step. They’re kids. Learning and running around is, most naturally, what kids do. These children have parents who are committed to… Read More
High Summer & Highways – Solar Power in Action
It’s hot. It’s summer. Weather in the world has been, as we all know, weird. Some people continue to spin this weirdness as normal, of no concern — circumstances that require no response on the part of the humans who live it. My friends Jon Waterhouse and Mary Marshall spend a good deal of time with indigenous people who live climactic weirdness. The Elders among them have been noting alarming changes… Read More
Billy Frank — This is what Enduring Looks Like
A great man has left this life – the one we know together here on the bold curve of our planet. Billy Frank, a Nisqually Indian man who was born and lived his whole life long – all 83 years – among the people of the Nisqually Tribe, among the tribal people of the Columbia River, of the Pacific Northwest, of North America, of the globe. He accepted no slight to Native… Read More