Original hand-carved linoleum prints on hand torn archival cotton paper. Printed by hand pressing with water-soluble oil inks, 14in x 11in. Print comes packaged with a cardboard backing and a vellum protection sleeve.

Story behind the print

In November and December of 2021, the Nooksack River and tributaries flooded catastrophically. The event was so significant that the Nooksack River ran backwards, flooding into the Fraiser River Valley along an ancient Pleistocene river route. The flood included a place called Canyon Creek, which is a steep, cobbled creek that descends through Chuckanut Formation bedrock and Douglas fir forests, to tumble into the Nooksack at the very edge of the national forest lands.

We spoke with one of the homeowners close to the creek, and he told us that during the night of the floods, the roar of the creek stopped. Minutes passed by and, impossibly, the sound vanished. A huge boom then shook the whole valley and the flood waters returned. An avalanche and ice dam had formed above in the steep creek, which then exploded under the pressure and advancing waters.

I’ve been visiting this creek for 22 years, always to see the same cataracts, search for fossils, and swim in beloved pools. The creek is ever changing. After the floods, we inspected the creek with fascination and dread, holding our breath to see what still remained. It was a spectacle of unimaginable force, but you had to know the creek intimately to be able to see the details. In new places, the creek was scoured. In other places, swimming holes were filled with giant cobbles. At a favorite swimming hole the creek had scoured away 14 feet of soil and a grove of 40 year old cottonwood to expose ancient bedrock. The flood revealed a perfect tiered, cascading washboard of bedrock waterfalls, carved millennia ago long since buried and unused. And now that creek ran through this ancient route, like a miracle. Many people in the community came to this new pool over the last summer, to swim in this river fossil.

At the mouth of Canyon Creek, the force of the flood had disbursed so much rock and sediment that a huge 180 degree fan of debris slowed the creek from a steep tumble to a large braided wash. The mouth of the creek had been almost always too swift to cross. But now, you can walk across the wash of gravel up to your ankle or mid calf, like a child’s wading pool. We spent many hours this summer at this wash and called it our living room. Smooth, warm rocks arranged like sofa and ottomans were surrounded by slow, lazy creek water. We pretended we were alligators and crawled on our bellies, or searched for fossils and watched for birds. And in the center of the wash we found the engine block of an early 20th century vehicle, now rusted red and flush with the curve of the creak.

In a year of climate disaster from flooding and drought, I often repeated to myself at the creek that, “this too is climate change.” This is what environmental change looks like: our favorite and most beloved places are forever changed by unimaginable force and scale, never to be the same again. But all is not lost, and if you pay attention to what is left after the flood, you will find that you still belong. This Earth is our living room, she is our family room. We will never stop belonging to her.

This place, the living room, is a real place and I can take you there. But you don’t need me to find it, because it can be found in many other places, by many other hearts. You simply have to pay attention and remember that you belong.