The Freeflow Podcast

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!