As has been said before, Spring is slow here, so when the opportunity arises to avoid a downpour and step out for an overnight stomp, you gotta go . . . so we did.

Here we celebrate both the bright glow of Spring color and its amazing and subtle undertones.

[Please avoid the use of Internet Explorer here.]

For the previous Steppin’ Out, click here.

We have contributed to a significant Winter project during our recent hibernation. After many months of scheming and dreaming with friends from LIONarchitecture, MOTUV, and others, and after several more months of hard work and organization, we are excited to introduce you to a brand new journal called LANTERN that will be published each season to celebrate the growth and change in our time on Earth. As the Editors of the Journal explain:

Creating anything new, particularly a project of creative collaboration, is an act of pathological hope. It has been said the whole difference between construction and creation is this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists. It was with this sense of hope and creation that this project began—an idea borne not only of the notion that we had something to say, but that we hoped we could express it in a way that was engaging and thought provoking as well as intellectually rigorous.

We began with a belief that a small but committed group of writers, professionals, and artists could create a publishing space that allows for the expression of ideas through various media—poetry, fiction, essays, images, and music—lending equal credence to a reader’s intellect and intuition.

Letter from the Editors, Spring 2012

Volume I, Issue 1 for Spring 2012 includes a dynamic set of ARTicles that explore, consider, question, and suggest in a way that is both disparate and unified. With this Issue of Lantern in hand,

discover why push is pull,
     [black lantern synergy]

understand the truth beyond fear,
     [movement of the unified voice]

realize the hunter must know hunger,
     [charles frederick vega]

reunite the id and ego,
     [mark ruzicka]

shelter in a house that isn’t,
     [dan rowan]

uproot your fear of the dark,
     [troy payne]

choose a moonlit path,
     [vincent capone]

flourish by pruning your roots,
     [m. dane zahorsky]

remember to forget,
     [matt teismann]

consider the flame in conflagration,
     [j. maxwell montgomery]

keep your eyes downriver, and
     [vince sliwoski]

embrace the void.
     [r. lynch]

We are very proud to have played a role in the development of Lantern and look forward to continuing to contribute to the strong collaboration that it has spawned. For BLS’s ARTicle, click here. Troy Payne’s contribution is here. So much more to come.

Cover by Greg Jay
equalandopposite.com

A mild winter has brought some disappointment in the Northeast. All winter my camping friends and I have been trying to reach a secluded lean-to adjacent to a small Adirondack lake, which in the summer is a paddle and a hike away. We have been waiting for the lakes to freeze well enough to walk across the lake and hike the trail. Recent cold temperatures finally allowed us to travel across the lake, into the wilderness, and, with a few stops along the way to enjoy the beautiful weather, we made it to the lean-to. We were extremely excited that it was snowing, a sight we’ve missed during this calm winter.

Six inches of snow fell before dinner. The fire was fueled by pieces of a windfallen tree near the camp. The fire created a great gathering point for enjoying this rare night of snow, but I stepped away from the group and headed out on the snow covered lake to take in the surrounding sounds of the forest. As I walked long the frozen edges I heard limbs swaying in the wind, coyotes howling around me, and other animals making their way through the thick wooded forest. I looked back and saw our fire burning brightly and I moved on. I got to a point on the other edge of the lake where I could no longer see the fire and took a seat on a tree stump to engage the dark night. There I was, in the woods surrounded by all of nature, and I all I could think about was how insignificant I was in this wilderness during a snow storm, a feeling only attainable by seeking this sort of solitude.

Experiencing the power of the wilderness on a quiet dark night is hard to describe. As we live our day to day lives in the built environment without ventures into the unknown, we do often not realize the true scale of our lives short of “natural disasters” that interrupt city life. These peaceful and humbling experiences, attuned to the subtle rhythm of our life on this planet, teach us a lot about ourselves and the world. It is well worth a short walk away from the fire and into the dark and snowy night to sense such perspective.

When I think of “projects,” I think back to elementary school, to a time of “art projects.” I always really enjoyed working on them…cutting stuff out, pasting it down, painting, sketching. These are early lessons in the power of the imagination and, better yet, in the superpower of manifestation. Our friend Kiraly offers a wonderful reminder of such fantastic projections of ourselves in her recent piece, The Owl:

When I think about it, those old projects are not so far from the type of work we do these days.

We’ve got a bunch of projects on-line right now, and it has been an extrememly busy couple of months. For us, it’s always a good feeling to have iron in the fire. New work to add to, to expand upon, and space to cultivate the outgrowth from past works. In the coming weeks, we will unveil our latest project: a collaboration over a year in the making with friends from LIONarchitecture, MOTUV, and many others. Keep an eye on the near horizon . . .

For a look at one of the coolest sets of images we’ve ever come across, click here.

Wildlife photography ain’t easy, and Mr. Nichols shows some very serious chops in this set. The charging elephant, the swimming croc, the swooping spotted owl! Wow.

There’s no doubt that the photograph faces some stiff competition from other art media, but these images show that photography can do some things that video can’t–they invite you into this fraction of a moment, let you explore all the intimate detail in frozen time, and beg you to develop your own narrative for the action based on the mood and motion in the shot. I mean, one can imagine the actual context for that owl shot as it swoops down just over the photographer’s head, and it probably involves some clumsy form of retreat, a few expletives, and some serious celebration to follow (if i got that shot I would not be able to play it cool). The image, however, just presents a nice, quiet swoop and a brief flash of engagement. Perfect.

The Boundary Waters of northern Minnesota was the trip we took just before we launched into the Black Lantern project. The images from those rivers and lakes played a large role in the early imagery of the Black Lantern and continue to serve as an enduring reminder of the early inspired thinking about and visualization of the project.

We began on the east side of the park after a long journey up the Gunflint Trail. This was a challenging trip, particularly in the early going. We had to carry our canoes and all of our gear between lakes, and the portages at the beginning of our excursion were long and traversed some fairly rough terrain. And the mosquitoes. They were brutal and savaged any bit of exposed flesh on our long portages and, occasionally, at our camp as well. To top it off, it rained pretty steady for the first four days…no sight of the sun or the moon or the stars. Just grey. We carry a “Morale Meter” on our trips, and by day three we were a bit waterlogged and the meter began to slip. I wore the same clothes day and night while it rained. I would get them nice and wet while we were paddling, then stand by the fire all evening until I was dry enough to sleep.

And yet, the trip remains one of our favorites. On day four, cracks appeared in the clouds and by day five we had afternoon sun that gave way to a sea of stars. This place was amazing, unique in many ways compared to those we had seen before. We learned things . . . the many and varied calls of the loons, the incredible incendiary nature of Birch bark, the waterproofedness of skin, the resilience of tribe.

Hope you enjoy the pics and descriptions.

Click here for an Hom[ag]e to the Painted Hills of eastern Oregon.

Next up, the San Juan Islands of northwestern Washington.

For the previous Steppin’ Out, click here.

First up, the Painted Hills of eastern Oregon.

We explored this stark monument to time in fading light one September evening in 2009. If not for the wind, it seemed like standing in a geologic-scale hourglass of colored sand, the long ages slowly piled up in grainy ribbon. It is good to show your humility to a place like this, to gesture kindly to its long past and distant future, to breathe it deeply. At least, that is what we think . . . here we throw our grains of sand on the pile:

Next up . . . the Boundary Waters of northern Minnesota.

From Cartesian Eco-FemDarkanism:

“Oceans of water leap to the pull of the Moon;
You are two-thirds water;
The Moon pulls you.”

From [r]:EVOLUTION:

“I can’t explain kinship
with sandstone,
when beaten and broken
by heat and distance
and weight–
reduced to a grain.
Understanding
being
part of rock
and sharing in its insignificance
and interconnectedness.
Follow the vacuum pull–
once again elements melt
demonstrating oneness,
and I am breathing water more calmly now.
Follow the furnace in the moon, coldfire;
the fabric of visualization
turns velvet black
as we journey across the Uni-Verse
in a stardust blanketsphere.”

From Black [Letters to the Future]:

Meteorites
falling hearts alight.
Passion evaporated,
changed from water to air.
I know it to be there, though I cannot see in
[a ghost against my skin].

I see only how it affects subtly the surround.

As products of the Midwest, we have been subjected to serious bouts of humidity–literally, water in air. There have been occasions in the depths of a river basin in southern Missouri where the air feels so thick with moisture that one can imagine what it might be like to breathe water. Certainly, one can percieve the shared exchange between lungs and water and air, breaking down that old duality between earth [here, as body] and sky.

Below, I breathe water at the Moon, and our thirsty desert satellite draws up her liquid muse.

Adaptation is common in nature; ecosystems routinely change in response to all manner of environmental factors. From this commonality, many argue adaptation is a natural response-strategy for human beings to handle recent changes in environmental conditions. This was the philosophical topic that my groups of friends discussed on our December campout in the Adirondacks in northern New York.

The imagery that sparked this philosophical and practical discussion was that of a lake, frozen by cold temperatures over one night. As we went to sleep at the end of our first day, the lake rippled in the breeze, free from ice or snow. The temperatures dropped rapidly in the dark from around freezing to five below zero. We woke to the sun rising over a frozen lake. My camping partner looked at me, still half asleep, and said: “Well, winter came overnight. Hope you’re ready!” It was amazing. We sat on the edge of a cliff astounded that the entire lake froze so quickly. We were freezing, yet there we all sat after a long and extremely cold night.

As the short day turned again to night, we stood around the campfire and began to discuss the legal and policy issues that the world is dealing with to address climate change. The debate has become two sided: try to stop climate change or accept its occurrence and adapt. Recently, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) and has come out with a climate change adaptability report. This report discusses what New York must do to adapt to climate change including considerations of public health, water, energy, communications, costal zones, ecosystems, transportation and agriculture. New York City’s Department of Environmental Protection has issued a similar report.

As an environmental advocate I have always looked at these reports as admitting defeat. We failed at stopping climate change and therefore we have to adapt. I have come to realize that this is not the case. We can still fight climate change by lowering our carbon emissions while at the same time adapting as best we can and preparing to handle its effects. On the last night of our campout we could not stop the cold, but we were able to adapt and have another great experience in the backcountry. We’ll need that sort of positivity and adaptability to fast changes going forward.