Meet our Guests: Jon Christensen

Jon Christensen

Environmental Historian (UCLA), Journalist

Sand to Snow National Monument, CA

11/12/2021

As a long-time journalist covering the West, Jon Christensen has long reported on and taught about the West’s most archetypal quality: conflict. Whether it’s early settler conflicts, public lands extremism, the rural-urban divide, water wars, or recent megafires, the West has long appeared in media as the American region of crisis.

To challenge the historical conflict-mythos, Jon strives to forefront stories that upend it. To provide the Westies with an example, Jon played his feature-length documentary “Politics and the Environment of the New West,” a depiction of former Nevada Senator Harry Reid’s career. Harry Reid legislated numerous, often collaborative conservation decisions in Nevada, satisfying many, but not all, ranchers, hunters, environmentalists, farmers, and corporations. Portraying Senator Reid as a champion of grassroots representation and bipartisanship, Jon highlighted a rarely heard-of occurrence in today’s politically polarizing climate. He then encouraged Westies to do the same: dig into their collection of field experiences and help create a new, inspiring narrative of the West.

By Fielding Schaefer

Meet our Educators: Ann Walka

Ann Walka

Poet and author

Bluff, Utah

10/05/2021

            Sheltered from the rain in a sandstone alcove, Ann Walka sits with Westies on the first day of a week-long writing workshop on Comb Ridge, Utah. With an unwaveringly gentle demeanor and warm smile, she instructs students to draw a blind contour of their hand, and then write a list of all the sounds they can hear: exercises to calm the mind. She then sends everyone off to wander, find a spot alone, and use the senses to write boundlessly about the rich desert landscape.

Ann is no stranger to place-based writing. Splitting her time between Bluff, UT and Flagstaff, AZ, Ann writes poetry and stories about the landscape and history of the American West. Using her intimate understanding of the intersection of ecology, geological processes, and human history of places like the Utah desert, Ann inspired Westies to work toward writing a “deep map of place,” a concept inspired by desert writer Ellen Meloy. She encouraged students to draw from their direct experiences, nurture curiosity, notice particularities, use the imagination abundantly, and share work aloud every day. With Ann’s guidance, students wrote weather reports, list poems, origin stories, imaginative pieces about human life in the desert, and personal essays rooted in place. Ann’s welcoming attitude, inventive assignments, and deeply creative spirit allowed Westies to slow down and think deeply about the landscapes around and within them.

By Erika Goodman

Editor’s note: the photo above is from SITW 2018 as we did not take a portrait of Ann on SITW 2021

Meet our Educators: Sarah Gilman

Sarah Gilman

Freelance writer, editor, illustrator

Methow Valley, WA

9/6/21- 9/8/21

Gliding up a small hill covered with crunchy bluebunch wheatgrass, Sarah Gilman tosses a juniper branch to her rambunctious terrier, Taiga, and looks out over the expansive North Cascades in the Methow Valley. Twenty students walk with her, and as she crests the peak, she motions for them to find a seat before giving a journal prompt: “Write about something that gives you hope.”

Sarah, a member of the first Semester in the West in 2002, is a writer whose illuminating work about the intersection of people, landscape, and other species has been featured in The Atlantic, High Country News, National Geographic News, Smithsonian.com, The Guardian, Patagonia’s The Cleanest Line, and The Last Word on Nothing.

Sarah joined Semester in the West 2021 to host a writing workshop, helping Westies digest their experiences with biologists, fire experts, ranchers, land managers, and tribes in rural Washington and Oregon, into short, creative essays known as Epiphanies. To some, it may seem odd that Sarah encouraged Westies to walk the landscape, write poetry, and journal about topics unrelated to their papers’ focus. But with a soft smile, she candidly explained, “The best ideas don’t come from staring at a computer screen.”

Every afternoon for three days, Sarah met with Westies one-on-one to brainstorm, workshop, and edit their pieces. She encouraged concise and focused writing by challenging students to make sure every part of the essay actively grounded the main idea in evidence and tangible experience.

During the last evening of the writing workshop, Westies read their creations to their peers under the night sky. The next morning, as Sarah drove away with Taiga barking out the truck window, Westies smiled knowing her presence will undoubtedly guide their future as writers, critical thinkers, and community members. 

By Josh Matz

Photo Credit: Nathaniel Wilder