brownfield, noun:

a former industrial or commercial site where future use is affected by real or perceived environmental contamination.

cultural rewilding, noun:

the act of learning from our ancient past in order to shape a resilient life for ourselves in the present and for future generations.

between 2015 and 2020 i reported the essays that would form my book believers: making a life at the end of the world. the book follows visionaries and outsiders across the globe who are imagining novel solutions to biodiversity loss and climate collapse.

peter bauer, the subject of our short film, is a key subject in that book so when the opportunity came to film him in situ with his organization rewild portland, i jumped at the chance. the film is set at a former brownfield that is also home to peter’s office. this place called green anchors — a place that offers, to my mind, the perfect metaphor for our collective task: transforming the sadness of a brownfield into a biodiverse garden that feeds pollinators, native plants, and the gardeners who tend them. 

peter points out that the vast majority of our planet’s biodiversity has been consumed by agrarian and industrial civilizations in a relatively short time — that’s what it means to live in a mass extinction event.

my pitch, in the book, and peter’s pitch in the film can be boiled down to this: there is joy and pleasure and meaning to be found in the invention of new worlds based on very old systems of reciprocity, in feeding with our hands and particular human gifts that which gives us life. as fascism surges around the world, those who study political history remind us that embracing the full range of human connection and experience — to dance, to embrace, to cook, to laugh, to make art — these are powerful forms of resistance as they challenge by their very emotional range the unimaginative, one-note, and grim cult of personality that describes any number of despots.

i add here that in the face of terrifying statistics, melting ice, superstorms, all that bad news; our love of people, of the greater than human world, and our ability to keep grieving and celebrating that which we love, are intrinsically life-giving acts. 

peter’s deep sense of connection to the natural world began in childhood and our film incorporates both interview and archival footage, exploring how ancestral skills like fire making, shelter building, and land stewardship, can help us reconnect with each other and build more resilient communities as we navigate an uncertain future.

producing this film has been a humbling experience starting over in a new medium in mid-life. our all-female team of first-time filmmakers came together through the university of oregon’s multimedia journalism program.

i’ll add that though i am credited as “director” this was a fully coequal co-envisioned and co-created production. after so many years devoting myself to the meaningful but ultimately solitary art of writing, collaborating with peter, our editor and 1st camera katherine gunning, and producer and assistant editor kaiya laguardia-yonamine; was not only a pleasure, it honors the spirit of community-making described here in our little film.