These field notes are part of a personal and professional learning project connected to an arts and ecology residency near San Pedro de Atacama in northern Chile. During this residency, I am spending time with questions of desert life, water, land, memory, environmental change, rural power, Indigenous knowledge, tourism, lithium extraction, and the role of stories in shaping public understanding.
The Atacama is not a metaphor for Colorado, and Colorado is not a template for the Atacama. They are distinct places with distinct histories, cultures, political contexts, and relationships to land and water. But they do invite a shared set of questions: What happens when rural and desert communities are asked to carry the costs of broader economic and environmental change? Who gets to define crisis, adaptation, extraction, conservation, and progress? What kinds of knowledge are treated as evidence? What does it mean for philanthropy, media, and public institutions to support community power rather than simply describe community need?
This series is a way of thinking in public. The posts may include observations, reading notes, interview reflections, questions I am carrying, and essays that braid place-based reporting with professional reflection. I expect the writing to be provisional. I also expect it to change me.
My hope is that these notes become useful beyond the residency itself — as prompts for more ethical storytelling, more grounded philanthropy, and more respectful ways of learning across difference.
