CONCLUSION

"This is a place, a landscape, that has taught me weather as a verb. To weather a storm, a change, a loss. To remember how it looked before a road gouged out the field and the ridge slope, how it looked before a cabin, the house, the settlement was built, how it flowed before the subdivision came of age. To notice and to remember in the sensory immediacy of the present the silence of nightfall before there are so many more lights. To speak the names of the animals that are of this place before and as they vanish: grouse, great-horned, whooper, eagle, elk, cougar, moose, coyote, porcupine, badger, beaver, bear. To hope for their weathering, their homes. To survive the storms, and to weather the natural and human evolutions of the place."

Laurie Kutchins, "Weather Diary" from "Spindrift: Stories of Teton Basin"

May we understand and claim our shared identity,
remembering as our communities evolve over time.

 

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The Spirit of the Northwest is a regional partnership project of the Idaho Commission on the Arts, the Oregon Arts Commission and the Washington State Arts Commission, funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal Agency. It is made available on the Web as a courtesy by the Community Arts Network. Questions or comments regarding this project can be addressed to Bitsy Bidwell, Community Arts Development Manager, Washington State Arts Commission, P.O. Box 42675, Olympia, WA, 98504-2675, (360) 586-2421 or email bitsyb@arts.wa.gov.