slope (2022-2025)

Slope is an in-process multimedia project that documents one wildfire site over the course of three years, from smouldering soil and ashes to slowly regenerating plant growth.

During the fire season of 2022, I found the closest active fire to my home and have been visiting the site regularely ever since. The fire site is located in a clearcut which was harvested along a steep slope above Duhamel Creek on the north shore of Kootenay Lake. It is in traditional unceded Sn̓ ʕaýckstx (Sinixt/Arrow Lakes) territory and located just above a historical intertribal trade route (Pearkes, 2022). When I first bushwhacked up to the fire site from a deactivated forest service road, it was still smouldering and sending up plumes of smoke. I have since hiked up to find fireweed and devil’s club blooms, autumn decay, snow cover, and creeks flooded with winter runoff. My emerging understanding of this place has informed research into vegetal and mycelial intelligence and regeneration in the aftermath of fire and beyond, the long-term effects of fire and logging on soil quality and erosion, and the layers of Indigenous, colonial, and extractive encounters on this site over time. I have grown attached to witnessing this place and its inhabitants transform and reanimate since the fire.