Creative Prompt No. 1
ADD YOUR RED ROCK TESTIMONY
Capture the spiritual power of Utah wildlands. Communicate the fragility of these imperiled redrock landscapes and highlight the threats—bad legislation, lack of understanding, arrogance, greed, dissonant values. Argue (implicitly or explicitly) for the necessity of stewardship and preservation of our public lands with your eloquent language, with the power of your stories.
Creative Prompt No. 2
WHO ARE YOUR HOLY PEOPLE?
Write, draw, paint, photograph in response to this excerpt from Luci Tapahonso:
“Before this world existed, the holy people made themselves visible by becoming clouds, sun, moon, trees, bodies of water, thunder rain, snow, and other aspects of this world we live in. That way, they said, we would never be alone. So it is possible to talk to them and pray, no matter where we are and how we feel. Biyázhí daniidlí, we are their little ones.”
Creative Prompt No. 3
Mile Marker 95, Mark Knudsen
Creative Prompt No. 4
GEOLOGIC LAYERS
Choose your favorite sandstone, and write, draw, paint, photograph whatever comes to mind.
Wingate. Entrada. Morrison. Moenkopi. Cedar Mesa. Navajo.
The “Glen Canyon Group” of formations is Wingate, Kayenta, Navajo. The “San Rafael Group” includes Entrada and Romana. Morrison is yet another formation, part of neither group. And Glen Canyon itself is almost all in Navajo Sandstone.
Creative Prompt No. 4
Watch this short film, Of Souls + Water: The Mother. How do you experience the universe in red rock country? What are the dreams that enable you to stay in the flow of life? How do you bring a life into this world? What kind of life? Write. Paint. Sing. Photograph. Submit your creative dreams.
Creative Prompt No. 5
What is wild within you?
Write in response to this excerpt from the poem Wilderness by Carl Sandburg:
“There is a wolf in me . . . fangs pointed for tearing gashes . . . a red tongue for raw meat . . . and the hot lapping of blood—I keep this wolf because the wilderness gave it to me and the wilderness will not let it go.
There is a fox in me . . . a silver-gray fox . . . I sniff and guess . . . I pick things out of the wind and air . . . I nose in the dark night and take sleepers and eat them and hide the feathers . . . I circle and loop and double-cross.
There is a fish in me . . . I know I came from salt-blue water-gates . . . I scurried with shoals of herring . . . I blew waterspouts with porpoises . . . before land was . . . before the water went down . . . before Noah . . . before the first chapter of Genesis.”
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Creative Prompt No. 6
The Canyon Wren