June 23-28, 2025
Registration opens December 5, 2024.
Give yourself the time to explore a remote, natural environment as a way to find solitude, connect to the landscape in a meaningful way, and write about your experience. Outpost on the Zumwalt Prairie includes a week of discovery, writing instruction, meals, and camping in an inspiring and unforgettable setting.
Outpost on the Zumwalt Prairie takes place on The Nature Conservancy Zumwalt Prairie Preserve, a 33,000 acre grassland in rural Wallowa County, Oregon. Instructor CMarie Fuhrman will guide workshop participants to explore new ways to invigorate your writing through discovery of the natural world.
Where Canyons Run Deep: History, Healing, and Belonging on the Zumwalt Prairie
Join CMarie for a weeklong gathering on the Zumwalt Prairie, a landscape where rolling grasslands meet the deep gorge of Hells Canyon. This is not a vacation, but a conscious immersion in place, its history, its beings. The week is an exploration of belonging and wildness, and a journey toward healing our relationship with the land.
We’ll gather in the mornings and late afternoons for readings and thoughtful discussions, examining powerful works from writers across genres who grapple with themes of place, identity, and the natural world. We’ll delve into the complex history of the Zumwalt, acknowledging the indigenous legacy of this land, and engage in conversations about what it means to belong—to a place, a community, and ourselves.
Through guided writing exercises and periods of quiet reflection, you will find your own voice amidst the song of nighthawks, winnowing of snipe, call of coyote, and the brilliance of stars. We’ll share our words, listen deeply, and witness the emergence of stories born from the land. A Nez Perce storyteller will join us one evening, offering history insights into the deep connection that continues between Nez Perce people and this powerful landscape.
This gathering is more than a writing workshop; it’s an invitation to connect deeply with the earth, to confront the complexities of history, and to wonder about the ways in which place shapes our understanding of self. Come prepared to spend days outside, to share meals and stories around the fire, and to take a short field trip to the edge of Hells Canyon, where we can consider the depths of history, culture, and understanding.
This is an Outpost for those who seek not escape, but a deeper engagement with the world, their writing, and their place within it.
Please download the Outpost on the Zumwalt Prairie Participant Packet for more details. This document covers :
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- Instructor Bio
- Synopsis of the workshop
- Naturalist Janet Hohmann
- What to expect at Outpost
- Getting Here & Opening Day Schedule
- Facilities
- Communications
- Weather
- Medical
- Meals
- Libations and Treats
- Sleep
- Terms and Conditions/Refund and Cancelation Policy
- Notice of Non-Discrimination
- Suggest Pack List
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About CMarie Fuhrman
CMarie Fuhrman is a poet, writer, and teacher. Her work has appeared in Terrain.org, Emergence Magazine, Alta Magazine, Northwest Review, Ploughshares, and many others. She is the author of the poetry chapbook Camped Beneath the Dam, and co-editor of Native Voices: Indigenous Poetry, Craft, and Conversations, and the award-winning anthology Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, and Poetry (winner of the PNBA and several other awards). Her forthcoming book, Salmon Weather: Writing from the Land of No Return, is due out in March 2025. CMarie is an award winning columnist for the Inlander and the voice of the NPR podcast, Terra Firma. CMarie directs the Elk River Writers Workshop and serves as the Associate Director for Western Colorado University’s Graduate Program in Creative Writing where she teaches poetry and nature writing. She is a former Idaho Writer in Residence and lives in the Salmon River Mountains of Idaho.
