The Burn 2025_BrassicasKidsSet by Freeflow Institute

Ed Roberson in conversation with Chandra Brown, Part II – Teaching & Learning in the West’s Wildest Landscapes

As a professional kayaker, Brooke Hess’s life revolves around wild rivers. But in recent years she’s become increasingly concerned about threats to river ecosystems - like the dams on the lower Snake River. She knew she had to do something to encourage more people to advocate for the removal of those dams. That’s why, in April 2022, she and three other women set out on the trip of a lifetime: kayaking all 1000 miles of the Salmon River, from its headwaters to the Pacific Ocean. https://freeflowinstitute.com/season3brooke/ Our theme music is by Nate Heygi and Wartime Blues. The Freeflow Podcast is made possible by support from the Prop Foundation. Mary Auld and Stephanie Maltarich produced this episode. To learn more about Freeflow Institute, go to www.freeflowinstitute.com.

Lailani Upham grew up on Amskapi Pikuni (Blackfeet) traditional lands in Northwest Montana. As a child, she listened to stories and songs about her people and their culture, as told by her grandparents and Tribal elders. As an adult, Lailani took these stories with her everywhere - they helped ground her, wherever she was, even if she was far from home. In 2019, she realized she wanted to take her stories to the next level by starting her own Indigenous-led company that facilitates "cultural storytelling hikes" on Blackfeet lands. Iron Shield Creative takes Tribal and non-Tribal people on hikes that are steeped in language, narrative, song, and community. Lailani's goal is to cultivate understanding from an Indigenous perspective and diminish damaging stereotypes by sharing traditions and stories. https://freeflowinstitute.com/3-2-the-leader-lailani-upham/ Our theme music is by Nate Heygi and Wartime Blues. The Freeflow Podcast is made possible by support from the Prop Foundation. Mary Auld and Stephanie Maltarich produced this episode. To learn more about Freeflow Institute, go to www.freeflowinstitute.com.

Leeanna Torres worked for years on the rivers of the Southwest as a fish biology technician. She spent spare moments on those rafts scribbling thoughts and observations in a pocket notebook. In 2021, she had the opportunity to merge her passions for rivers and words on Freeflow Institute’s Gates of Lodore writing workshop on Utah’s Green River. On the river this time, as a committed writer with a very specific focus, Leeanna explores concepts of identity, belonging, craft, and connection. Our theme music is by Nate Heygi and Wartime Blues. The Freeflow Podcast is made possible by support from the Prop Foundation. Mary Auld and Stephanie Maltarich produced this episode. To learn more about Freeflow Institute, go to www.freeflowinstitute.com.

In this final mini-episode of the Cold Weather Craft Series, writer, farmer, and Freeflow superstar Kitty Galloway offers an exercise that celebrates the spirit of springtime - foundation and new growth, inspiration, intention, and aspiration in this new season. While this is the last episode in our winter series, you can learn more about Freeflow Institute's upcoming workshops and scholarships, and listen to more of the Podcast at freeflowinstitute.com.

In this penultimate mini-episode of the Cold Weather Craft Series, Chris La Tray shares a beautiful exercise in which he invites us to notice the sounds embedded within and inherent to what we so often perceive as silence. Chris is a Métis poet, storyteller, and enrolled Member of the Montana Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians. He's also one of our favorite Freeflow instructors.

In this sixth mini-episode of the Cold Weather Craft Series, author and teacher Joe Wilkins offers up a stream-side meditation on the layers of landscape in our writing. Joe posits that any given landscape is a mosaic of layered and nuanced complexity, and he invites us to consider the entire system when writing about place.

In this fifth mini-episode of the Cold Weather Craft Series, author and journalist Heather Hansman shares some insight into making time for writing by setting boundaries and moving through the paralysis we so often experience as writers. She shares her go-to method of tricking our brains into just getting started.

On this fourth mini-episode of the Cold Weather Craft Series, Anna Brones, a writer and artist from the Pacific Northwest, leads a short and powerful exercise to consider why and where you need creativity in your life.

In this third mini-episode of the Cold Weather Craft Series, Leeanna Torres, a writer and advocate from New Mexico, shares a rich, four-part writing prompt, inviting you to consider the concept of Querencia, exploring ideas of home, belonging, roots, and our deepest knowing.

Freeflow's Cold Weather Craft Series is a midwinter deep dive into the maintenance and renewal of creative practice. In this second mini-episode, artist and musician Karima Walker leads an exercise that invites you to adjust your breath to your environment, to listen deeply, and to enter into dialog with the sounds and space around you.

Freeflow's Cold Weather Craft Series is a midwinter deep dive into the maintenance and renewal of creative practice. In this first mini-episode, Freeflow Institute's director Chandra Brown leads you through a short visualization to help you clarify the constituent parts of your creative life; to imagine what might be lying dormant, beneath the stuff of obligation and routine; and to consider committing to a short, attainable objective of building more negative space into your days.

So far in this first season of the Podcast, we’ve focused our attention on the rivers of the West. To close the season we are sharing a piece by Jessica Zephyrs, a writer, marketer, and Oklahoman living out her Rocky Mountain dreams in Montana. Jessica paints a portrait of a wild river so far and different from the ones that flow through our western landscape - she takes us to her native Oklahoma, to a river you’ve likely never heard of, the Cimarron, which is itself a very distinct, very non-western expression of wild water, and to the people who have shaped and been shaped by her home place.

Freeflow Institute’s mission is to connect people to wild or precious places, and also to connect people to one another: emerging writers to professional writers, creatives to conservationists, educators to students, established mentors to the next generation of leaders. So much of what we try to do is build cohorts of thinkers who might, together, effect change or come up with good ideas. And at the center of all that we do are stories. So today, we are happy to offer up a second alumni showcase - stories from two Freeflow alumni, Alli Hartz, whom we met last year on the Rogue River with Brendan Leonard, and Erin White, who was on the Blackfoot in 2019 with David James Duncan.

In this second half of their conversation, the pileated woodpecker follows producer Rick White and David James Duncan to the banks of the Bitterroot River. They meander and dip into discussion of great teachers, the spiritual life of literary characters, the endeavor to illuminate truth, and David's new novel as an "asshole free zone." David reads his ethereal essay, "Cherish This Ecstasy," and birds of all sorts - ravens, Canada geese, and vultures among them - visit Rick and David during their talk. As a bonus - and as an antidote to the gravity of quotidian life - on this episode of the Podcast, we hear David James Duncan make loon, raven, and falcon sounds. It doesn't get much better than that.

After 15 years in the making, David James Duncan's third novel, the 1200-page marvel Sun House, is nearly poised to make its entrance into the world. Producer Rick White caught up with David last year to discuss the evolution of his writing life; structure and solitude; education and fishing; and his decision to never write a long book again. Also, David reads, through tears and to the wingbeats of a pileated woodpecker, the first pages of Sun House.

In the summer of 2018 the Freeflow community established its roots. Our mission is to connect people to wild or precious places, but also to connect people to one another: emerging writers to professional writers, creatives to conservationists, educators to students, established mentors to the next generation of leaders. The students are the heart of our community. They raise good questions and challenge us to be better as an organization. They also collect and create really good stories. And so today on the Podcast we feature the stories and voices of two of our alumni. Both of these stories are, ostensibly, about birds. Dippers, or water ouzels, specifically. And both are also about so much more. Thanks to Lauren Smith and Zoey Greenberg for contributing these beautiful essays to the Podcast.

In his essay On Edges, writer Joe Wilkins reflects upon the differences between the wild Klamath Mountains and the eastern Montana plains that raised him. He explores, within the contexts of these Western landscapes and parenthood, concepts like freedom, wildness, liminal spaces, failure, and doubt. Joe helps us draw a parallel between the freedom in wild water and the freedom that children need in order to find their edges, to fall, to get back up, to understand the limits of the physical world and the limits within human societies.

Since 2019, Freeflow Institute has partnered with river conservation organization American Whitewater to provide scholarships to creative people who are passionate about rivers. The American Whitewater Scholarship supports Freeflow students who have good ideas for enhancing and expanding public awareness of issues facing watersheds or landscapes; or igniting public dialog; or encouraging the general public to celebrate, experience, and protect the rivers of our country. Today the Podcast features the voices of two past American Whitewater Scholars, Allison Fowle of Idaho and Jack Henderson of North Carolina. Allison and Jack share stories about the Wild & Scenic Rivers program, grassroots stewardship, education, and creative conservation. We hope you're as inspired by these two superstars as we are. To check out the American Whitewater Scholarship program, visit http://freeflowinstitute.com/the-freeflow-podcast-scholarship/. Thanks for listening!