Residencies
The Spring Creek Project offers two residency programs:
- The Cabin at Shotpouch Creek is a two-week residency for two participants applying together. Download the Collaborative Retreat Spring 2010 application.
To learn more: Collaborative Retreat at Shotpouch Cabin
- The Andrews Forest Writers' Residency is a one-week writer's retreat in the Cascade Range. Download the Andrews Forest Writers residency application.
To learn more: Andrews Forest Writers' Residency
Collaborative Retreat at Shotpouch Cabin
The Collaborative Retreat at the Cabin at Shotpouch Creek is a two-week-long retreat for two participants who wish to pursue a collaborative project, or two participants who each have individual projects and who anticipate a synergistic benefit from each other's presence. At least one of the applicants must be a writer who takes inspiration from the natural world. The second applicant may also be a writer, or he or she may work in any other field (e.g. science, philosophy, music, art, crafts, etc.).
Download the Collaborative Retreat Spring 2010 application.
The Cabin at Shotpouch Creek
At the Spring Creek Project, we believe that the writing life is far richer than the myth of the solitary individual, struggling alone to put words on paper, would suggest. The Collaborative Retreat at the Cabin at Shotpouch Creek recognizes that writers are part of a dynamic system of writers, readers and wider communities. Unusual energy and inspiration can emerge when people from different backgrounds work together in a place of natural quiet and beauty.
The Cabin at Shotpouch Creek is a lovely cedar-and-hemlock, two-bedroom cabin nestled in the Oregon Coast Range on a 40-acre nature reserve about 25 miles west of Corvallis. The cabin is centered around a spacious living/meeting/writing area with a grand piano. A wall of windows looks out onto Shotpouch Creek, a tributary of the Marys River. From the cabin, miles of hiking trails climb into the forest- and fern-covered hills. With its steep wooded hillsides, skunk-cabbage swales, creeks, meadowlands, and ridgetops, this 40-acre nature reserve and writing retreat will remain forever a place of peace, creativity, and natural beauty. The Cabin is home for our Collaborative Retreat at the Cabin at Shotpouch, as well as for workshops and scholarly projects and for "Conversations at Shotpouch," cross-disciplinary conversations on themes resonant with Spring Creek's mission. At the Cabin, writers and artists can find quiet and inspiration for their work, and small groups can gather occasionally for programs and field projects. Information on upcoming events at the Cabin can be found at our public events page.
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, the Andrews Forest Long-Term Ecological Research Program; and the Pacific Northwest Research Station, with funding from the US 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.
Andrews Forest Writers' Residencies
Creative writers whose work in any genre reflects a keen awareness of the natural world and an appreciation for both scientific and literary ways of knowing are invited to apply for one-week residencies at the H.J.Andrews Experimental Forest.
The mission of the Long-Term Ecological Reflections program is to bring together writers, humanists and scientists to create a living, growing record of how we understand the forest and the relation of people to the forest, as that understanding and that forest both change over time.
Opportunities
For the Andrews Forest Residencies, writers are provided:
- a comfortable, three room apartment at the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest
- access to a majestic ancient forest and world-renowned research site
- opportunities to interact with research scientists as they go about their work
- opportunities to have their writings included in The Forest Log
The residencies are intended to provide concentrated time for personal creative work that promises to further the exploration of the relationship of humans to the rest of the natural world.
Expectations
While we want writers to have complete freedom to pursue their own work during the residency, we also ask that each resident writer:
- visits at some point during the residency, each of three designated “Reflections Plots,” places of significant natural and research interest, and write some observatios and reflections about those places.
- gives permission to publish some of the writing from the residency in The Forest Log, a web-based anthology of notes, observations, poems, vignettes, essays, or insights, both working documents and “finished” pieces, that will over time constitute a multi-dimensional portrait of the Andrews. (We encourage residents to publish in any journal or other outlet they see fit. We only ask to have the rights to reprint anything you publish elsewhere about the Andrews).
- writes a brief letter reflecting on the residency, offering suggestions on what we can do in the future to make these residencies as conducive as possible to the goal of encouraging Long-Term Ecological Reflections.
- participates in a literary reading and/or conversation in Corvallis at the close of the residency.
Accommodations
Writers provide their own transportation and take care of their meals while at the Andrews. The apartment's kitchen is well equipped with cookware and dishes. A computer lab in the headquarters building can be used to access the Internet. Residents should bring a laptop if they so desire. A telephone is available in the headquarters building. Residents should have a calling card or pre-paid phone card if they wish to place long-distance calls. Cell phones generally do not work at the Andrews.
Information on restaurants, grocery stores and other conveniences will be provided when individuals are accepted for a residency. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us. The staff of the Spring Creek Project will do everything in our power to make each residency at the Andrews inspired, productive, and rejuvenating.
Download the Andrews Forest Writers residency application.
The H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest
Long-Term Ecological Reflections is based at The H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest, a beautiful, ecologically rich forest and a world-renowned center for research and education about the ecology and management of forests and streams. The Andrews occupies the drainage basin of Lookout Creek, a tributary of the Blue River and the McKenzie River on the western slope of the Cascade Range, about 50 miles (80 km) east of Eugene, Oregon. The National Science Foundation has designated the Andrews a Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) site. Here scientists conduct research projects designed to span human generations, to continue gathering data and insights for hundreds of years. Like the National Science Foundation's Long-Term Ecological Research program on which it is modeled, the LTEReflections project will gather reflections for generations, assembling a long-term record of changing creative responses to an ever-changing landscape.
For more information about the Andrews Forest, visit the website.
