Connecting dots between "Blued Trees," the Newton Creek superfund site and parts unknown

Last Friday evening I got two pieces of seemingly unrelated information. The good news was that I have been offered and accepted an ISCP/NEA residency, beginning on October 1st until December 31, 2015, to work on the Newton Creek problem. The Newton Creek problem is that it is a superfund site in New York.

Within hours of that news, I also learned that the Spectra natural gas pipeline corporations, in charge of the Algonquin expansion that would pass near the Indian Point facility, also in New York, the site of the Blued Trees overture launch has moved a month earlier than we expected to condemn the land and take it from private landowners by eminent domain. That news has accelerated pressure to expedite the legal process that would protect Blued Trees, the land it's on, and the community it's in with the fund raising through Rockethub that would support that process. The news came as I was also preparing to leave for the UK, for the Society for Ecological Conference, in Manchester, where I will be presenting about trigger point theory and launching the Blued Trees film in the Whitworth Gallery, at the University of Manchester.

Back in 1997, when I first daylighted the Ghost Nets site to restore the estuarine system, I took a shot of the moment when fresh water passed through the highest known storm surge line, indicated with granite chips left over from the granite industry that had buried the former wetland rocky intertidal patch, and met salt water for the first time in about 100 years. I called that shot, "Connecting the Dots."

"Connecting the Dots" 1997

Friday night, I began connecting a much larger set of dots, between the thinking that creates a superfund site, the site of a possible even greater ecological disaster, between natural gas and a nuclear facility with a history of problems, on the banks of the Hudson River, miles from several major East coast cities, and the people I look forward to meeting in Manchester. Each of these sites, are locations I would identify as trigger points: places where a small area could impact entire bioregions. Connecting these dots of trigger points will lead to parts unknown: parts where we will all rescue the earth from ourselves, or witness a great loss for all life.