Programs
The Trillium Project
The Second Annual Trillium Project, April 20 -- May 18, 2008
The Trillium Project invites proposals from people with a variety of backgrounds and interests—artists, botanists, biologists, writers, musician
s, philosophers, etc.—to visit or stay at the cabin at Shotpouch Creek for short periods of time, to study and write about the Shotpouch place itself, its history or philosophy or bird species or wildflowers or mosses or limnology or trout or soundscape... learn more
Long-Term Ecological Reflections: 2003 - 2203
In a program that will continue for two hundred years, writers visit sites in the forest to create an ongoing record of their reflections on the relation of people and forests changing together over time.
Long-Term Ecological Reflections is a collaboration between the Spring Creek Project for Ideas, Nature and the Written Word, a program in the Department of Philosophy, Oregon State University and the Andrews Forest Long-Term Ecological Research Program; and the Pacific Northwest Research Station, USDA Forest Service.
In all of our programs, writers are encouraged to visit designated study sites for reflecting on and writing about the forest and their relation to it. These writings, which will form a collection spanning hundreds of years, will be gathered in permanent archives at Oregon State University, and are accessible via the web-based Forest Log.
LTEReflections is based on these fundamental beliefs:
- That humanist writers should pay close attention to a particular place-to the mountains, rivers, people and the forests of the Andrews and its environs-because a close study of place will reveal broader truths that go beyond that place.
- That we should study that place for generations and learn to perceive the temporal dimension-the presence of pasts and futures-through informed observation.
- That storytelling and poetry, observation and experiment, myth and mathematics are all authentic windows on the world.
- That there is an unusual richness and joy in the community of art and science, in the coming together of insights from many different perspectives and disciplines.
- That there is wisdom to be gained; that the more we know about the natural world and the place of humans in the world, the greater our insight into how we ought to live our lives.
Residency Programs
The LTEReflections project hosts writers' residencies and other programs at the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest in the Oregon Cascades, where participants can interact with research scientists as they go about their work.
- Blue River Fellowships for Writers
- Andrews Forest Writers Residencies: guidelines and application (pdf)
- Public Events: LTEReflections sponsors occasional public symposia that bring together writers, scientists and humanists to explore the relationship of humans to the rest of nature. Topics include: New Metaphors of Restoration; Nature and the Sacred; Healing Landscapes; Cataclysms and Renewal: Lessons from Mount St. Helens