On a field trip to the Upper Basin of the Columbia River, Washington State professor Jolie Kaytes and her students see first-hand the consequences of industrial pollution for the land and people, and envision ways to change course (from the 2024 issue of Deep Wild Journal):
from “Channel Change,” by Jolie B. Kaytes
Driving home, students and I reflect: How do we design places that let people connect to the planet’s splendor and strife? How do we carefully move between and actively reconcile incongruous situations? How do we yield and also initiate, give way and make space for all life to thrive and evolve?
For their final projects, students create design visualizations that explore future scenarios for the Upper Columbia and share them with a local citizen’s group. The projects—depicted through sketches, photo-montages, maps, diagrams, paintings, narrative, and poetry—draw from students’ on-site discoveries, follow-up research, deep contemplation, and desires to do good, see anew. Their collective ideas spur conversations about access and settlement, about advocacy and empathy, about our relationships with landscapes and each other. Together, we imagine novel ways to find comfort in complexity, embrace beauty amid the broken, and like a river, channel change.
Jolie Kaytes is one of 48 writers whose wilderness-infused work appears in the 2024 issue of Deep Wild: Writing from the Backcountry. To learn more about Deep Wild and to check out our Fall Sale options, visit deepwildjournal.com.
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