The Long-Term Ecological Reflections program continues to grow, as the 12th writer in residence arrives in Spring 2007. In Fall 2006 writers from across the Northwest gathered at Andrews Forest for sharing of ideas and energy in what is planned to be a biennial event.
Here is an excerpt from the poem "The Web," published in Orion (2007), by recent writer-in-residence Alison Hawthorne Deming (see the Andrews Forest webpage for more of Deming's writings, www.fsl.orst.edu/lter/research/related/writers.cfm?topnav=167):
Is it possible there is a certain
kind of beauty as large as the trees
that survive the five-hundred-year fire
the fifty-year flood, trees we can't
comprehend even standing
beside them with outstretched arms
to gauge their span,
a certain kind of beauty
so strong, so deeply concealed
in relationship-black truffle
to red-backed vole to spotted owl
to Douglas fir, bats and gnats,
beetles and moss, flying squirrel
and the high-rise of a snag,
each needing and feeding the other-
a conversation so quiet
the human world can vanish into it.
Lina DiGregorio is H. J. Andrews's Education Coordinator