The moon glows above frosted fir and larch trees. Photo: Margaret Tessman
Art and Nature
by Margaret Tessman, Articulate Editor
When I step out my back door in the morning, I can take in the day without being assailed by street noise, and I have an unobstructed view of the mountains. When I walk a bit farther up the hill, I am surrounded by all the feels of the forest. If I’m lucky, mama elk and her calf stare at me from the outskirts of the garden, weighing the possibilities of breakfast. What’s not to love about a place that gives me such gifts every day? Well, maybe elk hoofprints in the raspberry bed, but sharing is caring, as we’ve been encouraged to believe from childhood.
Sadly, I also can take in the aftermath from the not-too-selective logging on my neighbour’s property, scars that will take years to disappear. And in a bad wildfire year, like 2024, I can look north up the Slocan Valley and gauge the air quality by whether the mountains are visible or obscured by smoke.
At its best, nature is a healer, an inspiration and a source of joy; at worst, an enemy, a fiend and a source of stress. How do we embrace that dichotomy without giving into despair or ignoring the realities of climate change, resource extraction and human folly?
I regularly receive inspiration in my inbox from Ryan Dowd, a homelessness advocate with many decades of frontline experience. He offers training for, in my case, librarians who deal with all kinds of people on a daily basis. This morning he wrote: “It is not a betrayal of the seriousness of suffering to find joy. In fact, it is essential; Joy is oxygen to the human spirit.” I felt like I was given permission to wear my heart on my sleeve.
Interestingly, many of the stories that we have chosen for this issue of Articulate focus on relationships with the natural world. Whether it’s participating in an artist’s retreat in the forest or backcountry, taking a group of children on nature walks, building a record of a threatened ecosystem, delving into the symbiosis of art and natural materials or recording the effects of nature at its worst, the artists we feature are paying close attention to nature and reflecting what they see, feel and think back to us through art. We are all richer for it, and hopefully a bit joyous.
