Beyond Us is a short experimental documentary video created in collaboration with composer Jacques Desjardins. This video documents some of the changing landscapes in the Redding and Whiskeytown Lake, California regions affected by the 2018 Carr Fire. Set to an original score, the video journeys through the transformed landscape and captures the recovery in this drought-stricken region that is experiencing longer and hotter fire seasons. Voices of people who are connected with the area–a park ranger, a botanist, artists, and a snippet from President John F. Kennedy's dedication speech at the lake–set the stage for contemplating how humans are intricately connected to the environment we experience.

Redwoods send sprouts that are clones of themselves when they are damaged.  These trees grow from the base of the trunk and will turn into what is commonly called a fairy ring. 

2020 CZU Lightning Complex Fire - Santa Cruz Mountains.

2020 CZU Lightning Complex Fire - Santa Cruz Mountains.  When you look close enough, you see what comes back first in the forest after the burn.

Firefighters are humans that come to this world with their own lived experiences and traumas. The profession adds even more trauma as they are faced with life-saving choices, choices that save their lives as well as the lives of others. I recently had a preliminary interview with a firefighter who has dealt with his own trauma and found that meditation, mindfulness, and cognitive therapy is key to building resilience in firefighters. Now teaching new recruits, he’s made mindfulness training and awareness an important part of the curriculum. Firefighting is a physically and mentally strenuous job. The public has traditionally seen firefighters as brave heroes. What would it mean to shift the narrative and see those doing this work as being humans and leaders in cultivating awareness and being first responders to their own trauma?

As I hold conversations with residents of the Redding area, I’m learning how people continue on with their lives after a collective event. The hillsides have changed as it takes years for conifers to come back to where they were before.  The Whiskeytown Lake in the National Recreation Area, referred to affectionately as “The Lake” when I grew up, has transformed with 95% of the park having burnt. The trauma is in the back of the minds of many. My mom has her go bag packed after the last rains come through. Vegetation is cleared back a number of yards from the property line and goats are deployed all over town to eat the “fuels” before the driest parts of the summer.  Yet, there are still many who don’t know how to live with fire, or know what they can do to mitigate the climate crises on an individual level. 

There are many native plant species that have been used as medicine by the Wintu tribe in Northern California such as elderberry and wormwood. In a preliminary phone interview with one of the Wintu representatives, I learned that one of the costs of the fire was the loss of these plants In speaking on-camera with a botanist studying the Whiskeytown Lake region’s recovery from the Carr fire, I have some clear descriptions of plants that are the most fire resilient and many include these medicinal plants.

Historically, the native peoples of the U.S. and Canada would use fire as ritual burns. In this Webinar by the Stanford Woods Institute, [Add Link] various indigenous land stewards speak about how fire was used as ritual, to aid in hunting, and to encourage medicinal plants to grow as their access to sun and earth would typically be overtaken by the tree canopy or other competing species.

Another discovery after the Carr Fire was that under the centuries-old brush were relics of Wintu villages. The discovery of these has shed light on a continued need to protect the artifacts and village sites of the native culture. Being able to share this discovery more widely poses other cultural questions about how populous this region was before the miners and settlers moved into the region and how the tribal council can continue to advocate for recognition.