This podcast is produced by the Spring Creek Project, an organization at Oregon State University that sponsors readings, lectures, conversations, residencies, and other events and programming on issues and themes of critical importance to the health of humans and nature. Our mission is to bring together the practical wisdom of environmental science, the clarity of philosophy, and the transformational power of the written word and the arts to envision and inspire just and joyous relations with the planet and with one another.
Luminaries Watershed Edition: Caitlin Scarano with Rena Priest
This special edition of our Luminaries series focuses on creative work about watersheds. Today, in the final episode of these watershed-focused conversations, guest host Caitlin Scarano talks with Indigenous author and poet Rena Priest.
Rena served as the 6th Washington State Poet Laureate and is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including the 2024 Washington State Book Award, the 2020 Allied Arts Foundation Professional Poets Award, and the 2018 American Book Award.
For this series, Caitlin kept returning to the question of what it means to tell the story of a river, or the infinite stories a watershed can hold. Rena Priest's latest book, Positively Uncivilized, is a collection of essays from a Lhaq'temish perspective on storytelling, settler colonialism, ecology, treaty rights, and salmon. The poetry collection gave Caitlin a framework she hadn't found anywhere else for thinking about reciprocity as an ethic for living within a watershed.
Rena's insistence that "we are interdependent organisms, reliant on the health of the whole" was ever-present in Caitlin's research into the Skagit River watershed.
"Luminaries" is produced by the Spring Creek Project at Oregon State University. This series invites people to share stories about writing and art that illuminates their environmental thinking or work.
7 Apr 2026
Luminaries Watershed Edition: Caitlin Scarano with Christian Murillo
This special edition of our Luminaries series focuses on creative work about watersheds. Today, in part three of these watershed-focused conversations, guest host Caitlin Scarano talks with Christian Murillo, an award-winning photographer.
Christian has worked with National Geographic, Harvard University, and the Smithsonian in his journey to explore the simultaneous power and fragility of nature, particularly within the context of climate change.
His book, Soul of the Skagit, tells the story of the Skagit River, starting from its glacial headwaters all the way down into Skagit Valley and the Salish Sea. The story unpacks our place within the natural world, exposing, and at times celebrating, the nuanced relationships that make the Skagit so special.
"Luminaries" is produced by the Spring Creek Project at Oregon State University. This series invites people to share stories about writing and art that illuminates their environmental thinking or work.
6 Jan 2026
Luminaries Watershed Edition: Caitlin Scarano with Amy Gulick
Welcome back to the special edition of our Luminaries series that focuses on creative work about watersheds. Today, in part two of these watershed-focused conversations, guest host Caitlin Scarano talks with author and photographer Amy Gulick.
Amy's images and stories have been featured in Smithsonian, Audubon, National Wildlife, Sierra, and Outdoor Photographer. Her award-winning books include The Salmon Way: An Alaska State of Mind as well as Salmon in the Trees: Life in Alaska's Tongass Rain Forest.
Their conversation focuses on Salmon in the Trees, a luminary book for Caitlin's work and thinking about watersheds. The two talk about how this idea of "salmon in the trees" is far more than a metaphor, but an ecological reality that speaks to the interconnection so often taken for granted in our understandings of watersheds.
By homing in on the great journey of salmon in Alaska's Tongass National Forest — from freshwater streams to the sea and back again — and on salmon's connection with bears, forests, and ourselves, we gain insights into what a watershed is and how taking care of our watersheds is itself a continuous journey.
"Luminaries" is produced by the Spring Creek Project at Oregon State University. This series invites people to share stories about writing and art that illuminates their environmental thinking or work.
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