Martin Dorn

Seattle, Washington

Acts of Reverence on Behalf of the Earth

It is hard to avoid feelings of distress over how climate change is affecting the entire earth system and the inadequacy of the response. Terry Tempest Williams suggested a possible alternative, writing "the time has come for acts of reverence and restraint on behalf of the earth. We have arrived at the hour of land." Can the creation and sharing of images be an act of reverence? For me, this possibility for reverence begins with the specific places that I know deeply. They can be as ordinary and nearby as Seattle's Magnuson Park, or the close-in river valleys of the Stillaguamish and Snohomish, but they extend in a broad sweep of geography northwards to Alaska. I am drawn to ephemeral, the unseen on the verge of revealing itself, the poised moment of stillness. Life-sustaining water, in its various forms, is either present or implied. In a dream I am hiking and stop for the night where an enormous overhanging rock provides protection from the weather. It is a well-used place with sleeping platforms and fire rings. The local tribes would send their young men and women there for vision quests, to fast and seek a guardian spirit.