Spring Creek Project

Spring Creek Project has been involved in conceptualizing and curating a number of published works, including essays and book collections. Below is a selection of those works. 

20/20 Vision
From a cabin deep in the Oregon Coast Range to the shoulders of a Cascade volcano, the Spring Creek Project asks a difficult question: "How should we understand our relationship to nature?" This piece by Nick Houtman was published in a 2006 issue of Terra magazine.

In the Blast Zone
As it erupted in 1980, Mount St. Helens captured the attention of the region, nation, and world, and it continues to fascinate us today: a constant reminder that we live in volcano country. In lucid prose and poetry by some of America's leading writers and scientists, In the Blast Zone explores this story of destruction and renewal in all its human, geological, and ecological dimensions.

Geographies of Destruction and Renewal
In the summer of 2005, 20 creative writers, scientists, philosophers and others gathered together on Mount St. Helens.  Harnessing the power of this compelling place, they explored ideas of destruction and rebirth in geological, ecological, and human terms. The Foray asked the question: What can this radically altered landscape tell us about how to understand nature and how to live our lives? Here are some responses that have been published in the online journal Terrain.org.

Bridging boundaries: scientists, creative writers, and the long view of the forest (pdf)
Through a residency program for individual writers, as well as special gatherings of small groups combined with larger public performances, the Long-Term Ecological Reflections program is designed to bridge the worlds of scientists and creative writers by encouraging them to share insights with one another and with the public.

Blue River Ethic (pdf)
A truly adaptive civilization will align its ethics with the ways of the Earth, but one that ignores the deep constraints of its world will find itself on the threshold of making the planet inhospitable to humans and other species. Considering this, what is our best current understanding of the nature of the world? What does that understanding tell us about how we might create a concordance between ecological and moral principles, and imagine an ethic that is of, rather than against, the Earth?

The Great Work
Our present myths and stories are usually set in a world with a stable climate, static environment, and reliable economy. However, if climate chaos, declining biodiversity, and unstable systems become the “new normal,” where will we look for new stories about how to create lives that are truly prosperous, sustainable, joyous, and just? The Great Work of our time is to re-imagine what it means to live well on a changing planet, a challenge set by the late visionary Thomas Berry. Read the winning submissions from "The Great Work" contest at OSU: 2011 (pdf) and 2012 (pdf).