The book Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry - edited by Derek Sheffield, CMarie Fuhrman, and Elizabeth Bradfield, published by Mountaineer Books, officially releases on March 1st 2023 and is now available for pre-order.
For those not familiar, in the first ever ‘Cascadia’ field guide, local experts, poets and artists are working to create a literary field guide for the Cascadia bioregion. This area is defined by the watersheds of the Fraser, Columbia and Snake rivers, and stretches from Mt. St. Alias in the north, to Cape Mendocino in the south, and as far as Yellowstone in the East.
Instead of using Western scientific taxonomy as the primary method of organization, and separating species by type or kind (insects, birds, mammals, etc.), this guide uses communities such as Salish Sea, Pine Forest, and Montane. Each community contains 7-11 species, or beings, who are interrelated and rely on each other. In this way, and others, the guide blends Indigenous ways of knowing with Western ones even as it gives place a voice. It is designed to focus not on the divisions but the many cohesions that make up our bioregion.
Cascadia stretches from Southeast Alaska to Northern California and from the Pacific Ocean to the Continental Divide. Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry blends art and science to celebrate this diverse yet interconnected region through natural and cultural histories, poetry, and illustrations. Organized into 13 bioregions, the guide includes entries for everything from cryptobiotic soil and the western thatching ant to the giant Pacific octopus and Sitka spruce, as well as the likes of common raven, hoary marmot, Idaho giant salamander, snowberry, and 120 more!
Both well-established and new writers are included, representing a diverse spectrum of voices, with poems that range from comic to serious, colloquial to scientific, urban to off-the-grid, narrative to postmodern. Likewise, the artists span styles and mediums, using classic natural history drawing, form line design, graffiti, sketch, and more. All writers and artists have deep ties to the region.
Edited by Derek Sheffield, CMarie Fuhrman, and Elizabeth Bradfield
