Winter Fishtrap Gathering - SOLD OUT!

RE-IMAGINING THE WILD
Kathleen Dean Moore, Roderick Nash, Jack Turner
February 20-22, 2009, Wallowa Lake, Oregon

This year we have invited three presenters who have not only written lucidly and compellingly about wildness and our connection – or lack of connection – to it, but who have all dug deep – with a paddle in whitewater, for razor clams at low tide, to lead the next pitch on a dangerous climb – and have experienced that connection personally, viscerally, committedly.

But the “wild” is as much a place in our minds as it is a place “out there.” And wilderness, Roderick Nash points out, is a uniquely American state of mind, constantly changing. But in an era when 68% of adults say that a microwave is something they can’t live without, is wildness as endangered in our minds as we believe it is out there? Or are our notions of what is wild simply changing? Have we moved beyond an outdated view of the world as “natural ecosystems with humans disturbing them?” If, as Kathleen Dean Moore says, human lives depend on being able to respond to the natural world, what does “nature deficit disorder” portend for our future? A cultural obsession with the language of economics and “management units” has taken the wild out of the wilderness, but Jack Turner encourages us to move beyond the abstract wild and “dig in someplace.”

Wallowa Lake may not be exactly wild, but it is lovely in February, and the Lodge has that fireplace made of river stone. It will be a fine place to “dig in” and explore these and other ideas around “the wild,” to write about the wild, to share your perspective at open mic. How might re-imagining the wild transform us and inform the way we live?

Come join us, ride the Fishtrap bus if you’re coming from Portland, and help find the answer!

Kathleen Dean Moore is an essayist best known for her books about wet, wild places -- Riverwalking, Holdfast, and The Pine Island Paradox. This year, she published three co-edited volumes -- In the Blast Zone: Catastrophe and Renewal on Mount St. Helens, Rachel Carson: Legacy and Challenge, and How It Is: The Native American Philosophy of V.F. Cordova. Her essays can be found in journals that include Orion, Audubon, The New York Times Magazine, Discover, Conservation Biology, and Whole Terrain, and anthologies such as What Wildness Is This? and the Norton anthology In Brief. She is the recipient of the Pacific Northwest Bookseller's Association Book Award, the Oregon Book Award, the Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Award, and a Choice magazine citation for an "Outstanding Academic Book." Kathleen is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Oregon State University, where she directs the Spring Creek Project for Ideas, Nature, and the Written Word.

Although he has written ten books and over 150 essays, Roderick Nash is best known for Wilderness and the American Mind, first published in 1967, with a quarter-million copies sold. Outside magazine listed it as one of the “Ten Books That Changed Our World.” A national leader in the field of environmental history, management, and education, Dr. Nash wrote the internationally publicized “Santa Barbara Declaration of Environmental Rights” after the oil spill of 1969. He has won numerous awards, including a Distinguished Achievement Award from the Western Literature Association, has been a frequent expert witness for land management agencies, and has appeared in several film documentaries. He became one of the nation’s first professional river guides in 1957, and has run more than 40,000 river miles, including over 50 runs of the Grand Canyon.

Jack Turner’s book of environmental essays, The Abstract Wild, was published in 1996. It is now in its fifth printing and is used by more than 50 colleges. He has also written a memoir of the Tetons, Teewinot: A Year in the Teton Range, and Travels in the Greater Yellowstone. He is at work on a philosophical tract entitled Wildness 101, a new collection of essays, and a trio of novellas set in Jackson Hole. A philosophy professor, Turner has lectured at the universities of Montana, Utah, Puget Sound, and Illinois, at Carleton College and Whitman College, and for a variety of other institutions including Greenpeace, the Murie Center, the Teton Science School, and the Wharton School of Finance Leadership Program. He has received several awards and fellowships, including the Whiting Foundation Writer’s Award in 2007. He has led more than 40 expeditions to Pakistan, India, China, Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, and Peru, climbed in Wyoming’s Teton Range for 47 years, and is president of the Exum Mountain Guides and School of American Mountaineering in Grand Teton National Park.

Click here for Winter Fishtrap 2009 Agenda
SORRY - Winter Fishtrap 2009 is SOLD OUT! Contact us to get on the waiting list.

Wallowa Lake Lodge

We meet in the old hotel’s great room, and eat in the dining room. Some bedrooms offer a shared bathroom, and are priced accordingly; some look out on Wallowa Lake, while others face south and catch winter sun. Each room is individual; we offer them largest to smallest, more to less elegant, on a first come basis. They are all on the second and third floors, but everything else at the Lodge is wheelchair accessible. We will help out-of-towners who need wheelchair access find suitable lodging. Meals are required–communal eating is a part of the event. Visit www.wallowalakelodge.com for more information on the lodge, including photos.

Winter Fishtrap Gathering 2008 was a sold-out success! Click here to see what it was all about. Click here for the evaluation of Winter Fishtrap 2008!