In the hands of men, land is both revered and ruined, and the line between continues to blur. The industrial belch of cities hangs over protected forests, and the collective waste of a world of people rains toxic heat on ice older than civilization itself.
The climate is changing, and whether it's a natural, cyclical process or the just deserts of careless generations, the landscapes we know may never be the same.
One of those landscapes has become an icon in an environmental renaissance. It's a 1.4 million-acre wilderness called Glacier National Park, named for more than 50 masses of prehistoric ice. Only 27 glaciers remain, and by 2030, they will have become little more than a memory.
Bono might sing about it. Al Gore might resurrect his "the park formerly known as Glacier" quip, but the cause now has unknown champions in the form of an artistic collaboration called "Vanishing Ice." A poet, a photographer, a musician and an artisan will spend 17 days in the backcountry this month, going from the east end of the park in Canada to the west end in Montana.
They will encounter nine glaciers on their way, each artist expressing his or her impressions in a different medium, a different voice.
Seeds of changeOne of those voices will be Kim Philley's. She's a local writer who comes from three generations of Idahoans, though she was born in Singapore and grew up in Indonesia and Thailand. She is an imposing woman in stature and mind, her height and throaty voice and ocean of hair seeming to match the signature tumble of words and ideas.
This year, at 29, Philley graduated as a Hoyns Fellow from the University of Virginia with a Master's of Fine Arts in creative writing. She also taught poetry and got to know literary giants such as Rita Dove and Charles Wright, but before she could settle into any kind of secure, professional track, fate dropped a bomb.
"She called me up in Charlottesville in February while she was traipsing around Iceland and said, ‘I've already written you into all the grant applications.' " Philley said.
The "she" in question is 31-year-old Lydia Burkhalter, a military brat who wound up at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and then as a producer and production coordinator for Peggy Sirota, photo editor for Raygun and Bikini magazines.
The bomb in question was the proposal for "Vanishing Ice," which Burkhalter came up with during a two-month backpacking trek through Europe with an old 4-by-5 Deardorff field camera strapped to her back.
"There's something about being outdoors and shooting every day," she said, explaining that she had always been envious of people who risk something to live more fully. Eight years in Los Angeles producing other people's photo projects had taken its toll, and Burkhalter suddenly realized the bleakness of the landscape.
"L.A. is such a cesspool," she said. "It's a pit of expensive sunglasses and fancy cars, and here I am riding my bike into Hollywood. None of my friends talk about the environment. None of them think about what they're buying, what they're throwing away, what they're not recycling, what they're not doing. It became obvious."
From L.A. to the RockiesBurkhalter craved challenge, something far away from the sunglasses and cars and obnoxious privilege. She thought about exploring the John Muir Wilderness in California but worried about following in the footsteps of other artists and conservationists. She knew she wanted the expedition to be a collaboration, and Philley popped into her head. The two were roommates once, and they had always respected each other's work.
When they talked about the project, Philley mentioned Glacier, where her father had been a park ranger in the '60s and where her parents met. The place had mythical status in her family, and Burkhalter connected to it almost immediately.
"I'm so inspired by new landscapes, by things I haven't seen before. Maybe it ties into my childhood moves, but there's something that just works for me, and I want to capture that situation," she said.
The situation Burkhalter and her team hope to capture is the rapid recession of the glaciers, a state of affairs that the United States Geological Survey has been mapping for many years.
Leading the charge is Dan Fagre, senior ecologist and global change research coordinator at the Northern Rocky Mountain Science Center. He also is technical adviser of "Vanishing Ice," a result of Burkhalter calling and talking to him about the vision she created with Philley, musician Tim Wright and "environmental stylist" Corby Sawyer.
"I just e-mailed him. We got his name from Kim's father," Burkhalter said, still sounding a bit surprised.
"He's excited about the project because we're young and approaching it artistically. We're really hoping this is something that can build and create an audience," Philley said.
The art of disasterFor her part, Philley approaches landscape from a place of ugliness. Not necessarily resolving into beauty, but exploring and sometimes glorifying the contrast of wild and built, dark and light.
"I absolutely work from ugliness. I couldn't write about this otherwise," she said. "You could put me in a field full of wild flowers, and I wouldn't have much to write about. There can't be a slant of light in the Blue Ridge Mountains without a Winnebago barreling through it. Changes and degradation are very rich to me. I find beauty and symbolism in the commercial and cultural vernacular, and I usually need a human element, some disruption to enter into landscape."
Burkhalter also thrills in the interplay of place and self, preferring to take portraits of populated natural scenes. The people are often mere brush strokes on the larger canvas of rivers, mountains and fields, but their presence is significant.
"I wouldn't say that I'm inspired by things that are going wrong in an environment. I'm more interested in things that are going right. That's going to be one of the challenges of the project. I want it to be more of a celebratory depiction of nature. To actually show what's happening, it will be much more like what USGS is doing, a ‘rephotography' project."
Rephotography has been going on for decades, and it has become a serious conservation tool. We live in a visual culture, and comparative imaging really hammers home the point that things fall apart.
Looking at a photo of Boulder Glacier from 1932 and another from 2005, you can't help but notice the disparity. In 1932, the mountain was thick with ice, even in the summer. By 2005, the mass had been reduced to a few scattered patches. Many of the remaining glaciers in the park have been rephotographed by the USGS, but "Vanishing Ice" will hit the few that haven't been touched.
"Hopefully the shock of the visual inspires people to be curious and to research the things that are going on," Philley said.
The beauty of Burkhalter's technique is that she doesn't work with modern equipment. She prefers the so-called burden of a heavy, wooden artifact, not only for the quality of the film, but also for the way it forces her to be deliberate.
"To take out that camera and take a shot, it's quite a set-up. You have to be really inspired to take a picture, and that really plays into how I photograph now," she said. "I don't take 150 snapshots and say, ‘Oh look, here's a good one.' I take one, and it's really intentional."
Tim Wright and Corby Sawyer work with similar intensity. Both Philley and Burkhalter described Wright as something of a sound puppeteer, a player of all instruments with the ability to capture the rhythms and melodies of nature as though he were directing a group of trained musicians. He favors thrift store equipment and found noises, and he weaves them into haunting recordings of life in particular places.
"He will go out with a guitar, riff a melody and record live birdsong by the river. You'll think these birds are from Central Casting and are told when to tweet," Philley said.
Sculptor Sawyer is a wildcard among wildcards. Her title of "environmental stylist" is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, though it describes her unique talent for shaping nature's castaways into meaningful assemblages. As a child, she lived in makeshift structures and hollowed-out trees, rouging her lips with pomegranate seeds and braiding her hair into rings.
The team won't be able to take anything out of Glacier Park, so Sawyer will have to use what she can find and abandon it after it's been photographed, written and even played.
"By working sculpturally, she'll be working in a very different vein of representation. But we're taking in the landscape as a whole. The glaciers are the symbolism of the trip, but I don't know if they'll necessarily be the bread and butter of what we experience. We want it to be a holistic reaction to the landscape, also the human element, the intersection of the human population in the park," Philley reiterated.
"If I can show a well-rounded sort of photo essay of all the diversity that's there, I'll be satisfied. That will be a really exciting part of the project — seeing where all those feelings go and what will come out of our collaboration. We're very excited about that. It has endless possibilities."
Making a dentBut what really drives these artists is the hope of reaching "a younger generation that has become inured to dry, scientific accounts of climate change." They acknowledge that being green is the cause of the moment, but they see the competition as a blessing.
"It makes me really excited. It's just one more reason why we should be doing this," Burkhalter said.
"I don't think anyone embarks on something like this without thinking it's new and vital, but we don't have the hubris to think similar projects aren't going on. We're artists responding to climate change, trying to document it. The glaciers are the most visual symbols of what's to come, and people respond to it viscerally," Philley echoed. "I think our collaboration is unique. We're not just there to report, but to report on how we've been changed and how the landscape has been changed by human movement, human enterprise. As far as reaching critical mass, I hope this is just a trickle."
Erin Ryan: 672-6732
