Schedule and Events

The current program of sessions including dates and times is now posted at the conference website Schedule Page. A mobile app for the conference schedule-on-the-go is coming soon. Due to these robust digital platforms which can be updated instantly with schedule changes, there will not be a printed program in 2023.

Schedule at a Glance

Sunday, July 9
9am – noon: Pre-Conference Workshops, both Virtual and In-Person
9am – 12:30: Outing to Washington Park attractions
10:30 – 11:15 am: ASLE General Membership Meeting
1:30 – 4pm: Outing to Portland Art Museum
1 – 2:30 pm: Concurrent Session 1
2:45 – 4:15 pm: Concurrent Session 2
4:30 pm: Land Acknowledgement & Opening Remarks
5:00 – 6:15 pm: Opening Plenary: David James Duncan
6:30 – 7:30 pm: Opening Reception
7:30 – 9 pm: Graduate Student, Contingent Faculty & Independent Scholars Mixer at Ecliptic Brewing Moon Room
8:00 – 9:30pm: Terrain.org reading at Architectural Heritage Center, featuring Teresa Mei Chuc, Derek Sheffield, Jasmine Elizabeth Smith, and Joe Wilkins
8 – 9 pm: Sake tasting outing at Sunflower Sake, Olympic Mills Commerce Center

Monday, July 10
8:30 –10 am: Concurrent Session 3
10:15 am – 11:30 am: AESS/ ASLE Joint Plenary: Elizabeth DeLoughrey & Alejandro Frid
11:45 am – 12:45 pm: Interest Group Meetings, International Affiliate Meetings
12 – 2 pm: Black Futures Farm Tour
1 – 2:30 pm: Concurrent Session 4
2:45 – 4:15 pm: Concurrent Session 5
4:30 – 5:30 pm: Diversity Event
5:30 – 7 pm: Authors’/ Awards Reception

Tuesday, July 11
7 am: running outing in Forest Park
8:30 – 10 am: Concurrent Session 6
10:15 am – 11:30 am: Salmon Commons Plenary: Carol Craig
11:45 – 12:45 pm: Featured Panel on Latinx Environmental Activism
1:15 – 3:30 pm: Reed College Sustainability Tour Outing
1 – 2:30 pm: Concurrent Session 7
2:45 – 4:15 pm Concurrent Session 8
4:30 – 5:30 pm: Poster Sessions and Sweet Snack Break
5:15 – 6:45 pm Regional Collaboratories Session
7 – 11 pm: Cultural Crawl in PDX Neighborhoods, Featuring Poetry Reading, Film Screening, Musical Jam Session

Wednesday, July 12
7 am: running outing on the riverfront
8:30 – 10:00 am: Concurrent Session 9
10:15 am – 11:45 am: Concurrent Session 10
11 am – 12:15pm: Bicycle Infrastructure Outing
12:15 – 1:00 pm: Sustainability Town Hall
1:15 – 2:45 pm: Concurrent Session 11
3 – 4:30 pm: Concurrent Session 12
4:45 – 6 pm: Closing Plenary: Cristina Rivera Garza
6:15 – 7:15 pm: Closing Reception
7:30 – 10:00 pm: Film screenings at OCC

Thursday, July 13
Various times: Post-Conference Field Trips (Rafting, Hiking, Washington Park)

We are delighted to announce the confirmed plenary speakers for “Reclaiming the Commons.”

Cristina Rivera Garza is an activist and the award-winning author of six novels, three collections of short stories, five collections of poetry and three non-fiction books. Originally written in Spanish, these works have been translated into multiple languages, including English, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Korean. She is Distinguished Professor in Hispanic Studies and Director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston. Rivera Garza was born in Mexico (Matamoros, Tamaulipas), and has lived in the United States since 1989.

David James Duncan is a father, a renowned fly fisher, and the author of the novels The River Why and The Brothers K, the story collection River Teeth, and the nonfiction collections My Story as Told by Water—a National Book Award finalist—and God Laughs & Plays. David lives in Missoula, Montana. His latest novel Sun House is forthcoming in August 2023.

Elizabeth DeLoughrey is a professor in the English Department and the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at UCLA who teaches postcolonial and Indigenous literature courses on the environment, globalization, critical ocean studies, and the Anthropocene and climate change, with a focus on the Caribbean and Pacific Islands (Oceania). She is the author of Routes and Roots: Navigating Caribbean and Pacific Island Literatures (U of Hawai`i Press, 2007), and Allegories of the Anthropocen (Duke UP, 2019), which examines climate change and empire in the literary and visual arts. She is co-editor of the volumes Caribbean Literature and the Environment: Between Nature and Culture (Virginia UP, 2005); Postcolonial Ecologies: Literatures of the Environment (Oxford UP, 2011); and Global Ecologies and the Environmental Humanities: Postcolonial Approaches (Routledge, 2015) and of numerous journal issues on critical ocean and island studies. Her scholarship has been supported by institutions such as the American Council of Learned Societies, National Endowment for the Humanities, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Fulbright New Zealand, the Rachel Carson Center (LMU, Munich), the UC Humanities Research Institute, and the Cornell Society for the Humanities. Most recently she was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship (2021-22). She will speak in a joint plenary with AESS keynote Alejandro Frid.

Alejandro Frid is an ocean ecologist and science director of the Central Coast Indigenous Resource Alliance. With First Nations of British Columbia’s Central Coast, he conducts research on marine ecology and conservation. He is the author of Changing Tides: An Ecologist’s Journey to Make Peace with the Anthropocene and A World for My Daughter: An Ecologist’s Search for Optimism. He and ASLE speaker Elizabeth DeLoughrey will speak together in a joint plenary.

JoDe Goudy First and foremost a follower of the Traditional & Ceremonial Ways of Life of the Yakama. I am a Father, a Husband, a Son, a Grandson, and a relative to all of my family and extended family. Former Chairman of the Yakama Nation Tribal Council (2013-2019). Current founder and owner of Redthought.org. An organization specializing in work supporting “Right & Respectful Relations” in the face of great challenges. The greatest being the “Doctrine of Christian Discovery” and its use as a foundational principle in the political and legal relationship of that of the United States and the Native Nations. Current Vice Chair of Se’Si’Le, a Non-Profit Organization utilizing Native knowledge to support our Mother Earth, Native Lifeway’s, and Future Generations.He will speak with Carol Craig at the “Salmon Commons” keynote.

Carol Craig is a Yakama tribal member sharing tribal information through public outreach. She has received several journalism awards and was the only person nominated twice to receive Ecotrust’s Indigenous award. She is a journalist and photographer for the tribal newspaper Yakama Nation Review

Conference Workshops

Pre-conference workshops in both virtual and in-person formats will be open to all conference participants for an additional $15 registration fee. Register for workshops on a first come/first served basis as part of the full conference registration (opening in early March). The names of all workshop participants will be listed in the conference program.

VIRTUAL WORKSHOPS

Note: virtual workshops will be open for registration to virtual conference presenters only for the first two weeks after registration begins, to give them the chance to enhance their conference participation in this way. If the virtual workshops are not full at that point, they will open up for other attendees to register as well.

“Bioregional Energy Humanities”
Jeffrey Insko, Oakland University
Among the key insights of Stephanie LeMenager’s important study Living Oil: Petroleum Culture in the American Century is her claim that “regions are vital intellectual frameworks for thinking about energy.” And yet, place-based scholarship in the Energy Humanities still tends to favor charismatic energy hubs like the U.S. Gulf Coast, sites of large-scale extraction like the West Virginia coal mines or the Alberta Tar Sands, or regions visibly and dramatically ravaged by energy extraction, like the Amazon basin and the Niger Delta. Mindful that oil spills happen in Michigan, Arkansas, and Nebraska, that cultural and political debates over wind farms play out in Indiana and Iowa, and that carbon capture infrastructure projects have been proposed in Illinois and Minnesota, this seminar aims to encourage Energy Humanities discussion of and inquiry into the effects of energy systems upon overlooked or understudied regions around the world. How can literature and other forms of cultural production deepen our understanding of distinctive energy cultures in particular locales? In addition to shared readings selected by the seminar leader, participants will be asked to submit short papers for circulation among the group. The seminar itself will be conducted workshop-style with an emphasis on a collective practical outcome (a group manifesto, a set of position papers or policy proposals, a cluster of publishable essays).

“Degrowth University: Structure, Curriculum, Pedagogy”
Pablo Mukherjee, University of Oxford
In their 2017 survey of what they call the ‘academic paradigm’ of degrowth, Martin Weiss and Claudio Cattaneo conclude that “in less than a decade, degrowth has evolved from an activist movement into a vibrant multi-disciplinary academic field” (“Degrowth – Taking Stock” 221). This workshop will examine the research university’s relation to degrowth. What is the relationship between today’s institutional sites of knowledge production (on degrowth itself, among other things) and that of the (near) future? From hiring to outreach, campuses to league-tables, assessments to curriculum, research to ‘impact’ – every facet of the research university today takes ‘growth’ and ‘development’ as its raison d’etre. How does this orientation condition the academic literature on degrowth produced there? Perhaps more importantly, what are ways in which today’s research university can be ‘de-grown’ by academic activists?

This workshop, curated by colleagues affiliated with Warwick University’s (UK) Critical Environments research cluster, is an invitation to model ways of degrowing the research university. Participants will work together to produce degrowth syllabi and curricula, write degrowth job descriptions, imagine degrowth governance and administration, model degrowth recruitment and admissions policies, and sketch out degrowth research agendas. In so doing, we will explore the possibility of thinking about degrowth as one of the key catalysts for academic activism, rather than a movement that drives academics and activists apart.

“Writing the Commons in a Bioregional Frame: Global Regional Exchange from Appalachia to the Aegean to your Back Porch”
Mary Hufford, Betsy Taylor, and Maria Bareli, Livelihoods Knowledge Exchange Network (www.likenknowledge.org)
Commons flow through us and around us as vital material gifts of air, water, food, and energy. But, the cadences and urgencies of those material flows are the very stuff of culture – providing constitutive rhythms of ethics, art, conviviality, belonging, and the passionate hungers and fears that arise from material lack. In this workshop, we share methodologies of the commons arising from decades of participation in environmental justice movements in the Aegean Islands, Appalachia and other global regions under threat from extractive industry but rich in vernacular cultural management of ecological commons.

The organizers share learnings from community / scholarly collaborations seeking to make visible and to reclaim forest, water, and cultural commons and to resist neoliberal energy transitions. We offer methodologies for writing in a bioregional frame while attending to poetries anchored in local, bodily, daily, seasonal, annual, life, and generational cycles of cultural commoning. The workshop opens space for you to listen to the call of the commons. How can one write and teach against the silencing, loss, and effacements of commons and commoners? What are writerly labors that breach neoliberal divides between professional, official, and vernacular languages in the care of commons? Through freewriting, myth-making, action research, and other creative exercises, we explore ways to create zones of solidarity among diverse commons movements and global regions.

IN-PERSON WORKSHOPS

“Ecopoetics Today: Place, Identity, Social Justice”
Nicholas Bradley, University of Victoria; Rina Garcia Chua, Simon Fraser University
Contemporary environmental poets are increasingly concerned with intersecting identities, indigeneity, climate crisis, resource extraction, and other questions of politics and social justice. Whereas some earlier forms of ecopoetics concentrated on specific places as sites of contemplation and reverence, poets today imagine “place” as enmeshed in global networks of capitalism, colonialism, and environmental change. As such, the conventional personal lyric is challenged by poetry that is public-facing and that appeals for social and political change. This seminar aims to facilitate a comparative discussion of contemporary poetry—in English and in other languages—from the United States, Canada, and beyond North America. Participants are invited to submit, in advance of the conference, short papers (approximately 5-8 double-spaced pp.) on a relevant recent work of poetry or a critical/formal/theoretical topic in ecopoetics and place. These papers will be circulated among participants. The seminar leaders will also provide a reading list. Discussion will allow participants to refine and extend their papers, which may be solicited for a proposed edited collection on poetry, place, and social justice.

“How to Do Empirical Ecocriticism.”
Matthew Schneider-Mayerson, Colby College; Alexa Weik von Mossner, University of Klagenfurt; W.P. Malecki, University of Wroclaw
Empirical ecocriticism is a new subfield that combines the methodologies of the social sciences and humanities to address how environmental narratives affect audiences and how they might do so more effectively. In a short time, empirical ecocritics from around the world have provided valuable evidence about the influence of climate fiction and attitudes towards non-human animals, among other topics. Given the novelty of this subfield and the significance of the questions that it poses, there is the potential for a great deal more. In this workshop we will take a practical approach to examining the potential of empirical ecocriticism. We will collectively select a pressing research question in ecocriticism and the environmental humanities, draft a questionnaire that can provide valid and reliable empirical evidence, and discuss how to analyze, interpret, and contextualize the resulting data. After the workshop, all participants will be invited to conduct the survey along with the workshop leaders and co-author a publication. Participants will be asked to read a few articles on methodology and empirical ecocriticism before we meet, but no previous experience with social scientific research is required.

“Niimiwim, ‘The Art of Dancing’ with Indigenous Futurisms”
Grace L. Dillon, Portland State University, School for Gender, Race, and Nations (Anishinaabe/ Metís/ Irish)
This workshop emphasizes the STEAM of high-context Indigenous Sciences that include Art (and ceremony, music, drumming, dance, and song along with stories), a strong feature of many forms of Indigenous Futurisms. This workshop will be a collaborative discussion and exchange of ideas in preparation for entering your own story/stories to several BIPOC and CoFutures (International) Climate Fiction and Indigenous Futurisms contests coming up by the Fall of 2023. Materials on Indigenous Futurisms will be provided but if you want to really engage with this workshop, consider bringing in your own copy of Moonshot: An Indigenous Comics Collection, Volume Three, edited by Elizabeth La Pensée, Anishinaabe/Metís/Irish and also by Caddo Nation Michael Sheyahshe. Let’s bring in the realities of science fiction, BIPOC Futurisms and, more closely, the realities of climate and environmental justice(s) embedded in stories of Indigenous Futurisms/Futurities/Futures no matter what the medium.

“Oceanic Ecologies and Pacific Resurgence”
Aimee Bahng, Pomona College
Given the historical interactions between the Age of Ecology and the Atomic Age in the Pacific, as well as the ongoing environmental impacts of military operations in Hawaiʻi and Guam, for example, the workshop addresses the legacies of “transnational nuclear imperialism” (R. Hogue and A. Maurer) as well as the transpacific “chemical diasporas” (N. Duong) forged in the dispersal of Agent Orange and other racial science war experiments (K. Bui) across Korea, Vietnam, and Okinawa. Rather than fixate only on the machinations of destruction, though, we also hope to gather, read, and confer about protecting Pacific environments and growing decolonial and abolitionist accountability movements together that foreground Native Pacific thought ways and organizing practices. Working to “remember our intimacies” (J. Osorio) and responsibilities to Pacific ecologies, participants will spend the first half of the workshop discussing a shared set of readings by Pacific Islander thinkers and the second half writing on site together.

“Storytelling as Indigenous Methodology”
Marta Lu Clifford (Cree, Chinook, Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde), Clark Honors College, University of Oregon; Theresa May, University of Oregon
This workshop concerns the power of stories as living demonstrations of Indigenous values and ways of being, or Indigenous methodology. Participants will work with a regional Indigenous Elder on the meaning, power, and uses of Indigenous stories in teaching and scholarship. We all know the power of stories – they can make us laugh, or cry, even rage; but they always teach. Stories shape our sense of who we are and what is possible. Stories can reveal truths that need to be spoken. Stories can also do harm. Thomas King writes that “stories are all we are.” He also reminds us that we have to take care with the stories we tell. We’ll explore how educators might engage Indigenous storytelling as a form of decolonization from the inside-out. Through embodied activities including storytelling, listening and creative writing, the workshop will ask how do Indigenous stories carry and preserve Indigenous knowledge, including traditional ecological knowledge? How do oral stories compare with written ones? What do we learn from being in real time and space listening to the storyteller? How do stories change over time? What are various ways stories can be told? Who owns the story and who has permission to tell it? Participants should come prepared to move and have fun!

“Visualizing Fire Futures”
Andreas Rutkauskas, University of British Columbia, Okanagan Campus; Jennifer Ladino, University of Idaho; Erin James, University of Idaho
Data continues to demonstrate that forest fires are becoming more frequent and are burning with greater intensity. This increased regularity, and expanded encroachment into the wildland urban interface, has resulted in more prevalent representations of wildfire across a wide range of media. In this multi-voice conversation, we will encourage participants to discuss how we regard, encounter and apprehend wildfire in the dominant media, academic contexts and the visual arts. How do perspectives vary across these platforms?

The workshop organizers will prompt participants to bring multi-modal contributions to the table, including personal photographs, a news clipping with images, a short paper, or a film still or scene. These materials will dovetail with brief presentations by the organizers, and a curated reading list/viewing list. Juxtaposing embodied experiences in the Southern Interior of British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest with observations from participants’ home communities, we will collectively unpack archetypes and tropes that are in circulation, including in the news, in narratives and in visual art and photography. We are interested in exploring the potential for new perspectives, stories, emotions, or lenses to emerge when we scale fire down to an individual timescale. How do personal stories and photos bump up against and/or inspire new relationships to living with wildfire?

“Writing and Painting with Rocks: Embodying Deep Time”
Allison Cobb and Daniela Molnar, independent scholars
Responding to our era of ecological crises asks for an imagination of temporal extremes: humans draw fossil life out of the deep past and transform it into future fossils—carbon and methane emissions, and plastic—that will endure into the deep future. In this workshop we will explore ways of knowing deep time in our bodies by collecting rocks and plants and transforming them into pigments for painting, while reflecting in structured writing experiments on the joys, griefs, and possibilities inherent in our bodily responses to our millennial-scale entanglements with home, in its largest sense.

Publishers’ Exhibit

July 9-12, hours TBA
We invite book and journal publishers in the environmental humanities and environmental studies to join us and exhibit their titles during the conference. A full prospectus of exhibit, advertising and sponsor opportunities is linked below.

Terrain.org Author Reading

Sunday, July 9, 8-9:30pm
This reading is sponsored by Terrain.org and will feature four authors: Joe Wilkins, Teresa Mei Chuc, Derek Sheffield, and Jasmine Elizabeth Smith. It will take place at the Architectural Heritage Center, 701 SE Grand Avenue.

Authors’ and Awards Reception

Monday, July 10, 5:30 – 7 pm
This event is a longstanding highlight of ASLE conferences, where we bring together authors and their audiences to eat, drink, and discuss and purchase books. There is also a short program planned to announce writing awards, and AESS scholar awards. Members of both ASLE and AESS are welcome to sign up; there is no fee to participate, but you must be registered for the conference.

Attendees who have published a book or books since the last in-person ASLE conference (June 2019) have the opportunity to meet and greet readers, as well as sell and sign copies. If you fit this description and wish to be included in this year’s reception, please fill out this form by May 15, so we can order table space and include your book in conference program information. There is currently room for approximately 80 authors to reserve a space on a first come, first served basis. Participants or publishers must arrange to bring copies of books to the event (we recommend 5-10 copies). Due facility rules, no advance shipments will be accepted by ASLE, AESS, or the OCC.

Monday, July 10
7:15 – 10:45 PM
Oregon Convention Center E141

STEPPING SOFTLY ON THE EARTH “places in the center of our ways of thinking, those who have been historically pushed to the edges of thought. They are the indigenous peoples, the protagonists of a possible future, since, as Krenak would say, ‘the future is ancestral’ and we need to learn with it to step softly on the earth.”

Scott Slovic will introduce this film. Director Marcos Colón will be present for discussion and Q&A.

Colón teaches Latin America and Public Health Studies at the International Affairs Program of Florida State University and is the director of the documentary “Beyond Fordlândia”. Colón is a doctor of cultural studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is also the editor and founder of the digital environmental magazine Amazônia Latitude.

Film Trailer:

PUSHED UP THE MOUNTAIN is a poetic and emotionally intimate film about plants and the people who care for them. Through the tale of the migrating rhododendron, now endangered in its native China, the film reveals how high the stakes are for all living organisms in this time of unprecedented destruction of the natural world.

Director Julia Haslett (she/her) is Associate Professor of Documentary Film at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill.

Film Trailer:

Cultural Crawl Events

Tuesday July 11 from 7-11 pm

Mississippi Studios, including Musical Jam Session
Located in the vibrant Mississippi neighborhood (and owned and operated by local musicians), a special conference patio at Mississippi Studios will be our main gathering place for the cultural crawl. Come early, stay late, or come at any time in between. There will be a musical jam session starting at 9 pm for anyone who wants to participate (you’ll need to bring your own instrument). Drinks and food available for purchase. 3939 N. Mississippi Ave, in Mississippi Neighborhood (take bus #4 north from Rose Quarter Transit Center to N Mississippi & Failing stop, or MAX Yellow Line from Interstate Rose Quarter to Overlook Park MAX stop; includes 15-25 minutes walking).

Stem Wine Bar and Mississippi Neighborhood Restaurants
Try a range of wines at Stem Wine Bar and sample a range of restaurants along Mississippi. Drop by Stem Wine Bar any time between 5-10 pm, specific ASLE meet-up time of 8 pm. Food and drinks available for purchase. 3920 N. Mississippi Ave, same transit directions as Mississippi Studios.

Eco Reading at the Independent Publishing Resource Center (IPRC)
ASLE-sponsored ecolit and ecopoetry reading featuring five Portland authors and five other authors attending the ASLE conference, 7-9 pm. Featured authors include: Allison Hedge Coke, Jonathan Skinner, Tyrone Williams, Rina Garcia Chua, Angela Trudell Vasquez, Janice Lee, Callum Angus, Jessica Johnson, Kaia Sand, and Flavia Rocha. The IPRC is located at 318 SE Main St 145 & #155 (take #6 bus or Streetcar A south on Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. in front of Convention Center, get off at Hawthorne or Taylor stop; include 5 minutes walking).

Cinema 21 Film Screening
Watch a program of nine short environment-related films curated by ASLE’s Ecomedia Studies interest group from 7:30-10:30 pm (including a brief intermission). Over its ninety year run, Cinema 21 has become a hub for Portland’s film culture, premiering films like Slackers and Drugstore Cowboy (filmed in the same neighborhood). Cinema 21 is also a one minute walk from Bar Diane, which provides a range of local wines, beers, and cocktails. 616 NW 21st Ave. (take bus #20 west on Burnside St. over the Burnside bridge to W Burnside & NW King stop, or MAX Blue Line from Convention Center to Providence Park MAX stop; includes 15-20 minutes total walking). Cinema 21 is ADA accessible.

Ground Kontrol Classic Arcade and Bar
Ground Kontrol was founded in 1999 by two record store employees who loved classic video games. Come sample a piece of ‘90s Portland and try your hand at a range of vintage games! All levels welcome, open from noon to midnight every day. 115 NW 5th Ave. (take bus #4 from Rose Quarter Transit Center to NW 5th and Davis stop, or MAX Blue Line from Convention Center to Old Town / Chinatown MAX stop; includes 12-15 minutes total walking).

ASLE Diversity Meeting: Supporting BIPOC Communities and Transdisciplinary Collaborations
July 10, 4:30-5:30pm

There will be snacks! Our catering for the Author/Awards reception will open early in an adjacent space for attendees of this event to grab a bite.

Join the ASLE diversity caucus for a mixer and conversation on supporting diverse scholarship in the environmental humanities and transdisciplinary collaborations. We welcome ASLE members who are interested in scholarly and creative research that highlight and uplift the voices of historically marginalized communities in the environmental humanities and sciences. Attendees will have the opportunity to meet potential mentors, mentees, and collaborators over structured breakout sessions with facilitators, centering on specific thematic questions. Breakout sessions may cover topics such as academic/creative publishing, transdisciplinary collaborations, and building institutional spaces for global, anti-racist, and decolonial approaches to human-environment relations. After these informal conversations, we will gather as a group to brainstorm ideas for how to support diversity initiatives in the years ahead.

Sunday, July 9

9:00 am – 12:30 pm
Washington Park Outing: Get an early start to the conference by visiting any of these attractions: the Oregon Zoo, Portland Japanese Garden, Hoyt Arboretum, or World Forestry Center. Participants will meet at the Convention Center and take the tri-met light rail to Washington Park Station.
Cost: Individuals will purchase their own MAX line rides ($2.50 per ride) and entrance tickets.
Garden: $21.95 adult/$17.95 student; Arboretum: FREE; Zoo $24 (must purchase in advance!) Leader: Pamela Pierce

1:30 – 4:00 PM
Portland Art Museum: Participants will meet at the Convention Center and take the tri-met light rail to see the permanent exhibits and tour this special exhibit that spotlights the Buckman neighborhood near the Convention Center.
Cost: Individuals will purchase their own MAX line rides ($2.50 per ride) and entrance tickets.

8 – 9 pm
Sake Tasting at Sunflower Sake:
Nina Murphy, owner of Sunflower Sake, will provide a variety of sakes to sample, as well as exploring environmentally focus aspects of sake production. Topics discussed will include varietal growth bands, rice conditions, and sake tourism popping up in surprising locations. Sake flavors may include yuzu and sparkling pear.
Cost: $35, Limit 25 participants

Monday, July 10

12 – 2pm
Black Futures Farm Tour: Black Futures Farm in southeast Portland is 1.15 acres of fruit trees, vegetables, flowers, medicinal and cooking herbs, vegetables and fruit, that aims to heal the connection between Black people and the land. It is affiliated with the Black Food Sovereignty Coalition, a Pacific Northwest collaboration for Black and brown communities to participate as owners and movement leaders in food systems, placemaking, and economic development. Farm staff will lead a tour and describe the farm’s development.
Cost: $15 Limit 20 visitors.

Tuesday, July 11

7:00 -9:00am
Running in Forest Park: Take the tri-met light rail from the convention center to Washington Park Station, and run on trails through majestic forests of the Hoyt Arboretum and Forest Park.
Cost: Free

1:15-3:30pm
Reed College Sustainability Tour: Tour and discuss integrated sustainability efforts on the Reed College campus, with a focus on grounds, land use, and the long-term restoration of the Reed Canyon (including the fish ladder created there). The tour will also visit the community orchard and students gardens, among other sites, and will involve significant walking, at times over uneven ground.
Cost: $5, limit 25 visitors.

Wednesday, July 12

7-8 am
Running on Willamette Riverfront: Meet at the Hyatt Convention Center entrance, run a 4-mile loop along both banks of the Willamette through downtown Portland. See Route Description
Cost: Free

11 am – 12:15 pm
Bicycle Infrastructure in Portland: Peter Koonce has worked as a bicycle planner for the City of Portland, and will lead a tour of bike paths and other infrastructure that make Portland one of the most bicycle-friendly large cities in the United States. Participants will meet at Cycle Portland, 180 NW 3rd St. (across the Steel Bridge from the Convention Center) which offers bike and helmet rental, or can bring their own, or use the bike share system. Download app at https://biketownpdx.com/. Arrive by 10:40 at bike shop.
Cost: $10 plus rental fees ($16 to rent bike with helmet at bike shop if bike is available, $26 to reserve in advance for full day), Limit 15 bicyclists.

Thursday, July 13 (POST-CONFERENCE TRIPS)

7:30 am – 1 pm
Hiking Eagle Creek Trail: This side canyon in the Columbia River Gorge features waterfalls, dramatic bridges and narrow ledges. Its historic trail was first built by the Civilian Conservation Corps, was badly damaged in the September 2017 Eagle Creek Fire, and reopened only in 2022.
Cost $25, Limit 22 hikers.

7:30 am -6:00 pm
Rafting the White Salmon River: The river flows from the glaciers of Mt. Adams into the Columbia River, but the Condit Dam blocked salmon from reaching spawning grounds, until it was removed in 2011. Our full-day raft trip passes the dam site, and outfitters with Wet Planet will explain how the river and its salmon runs have recovered. This is an important test case for dam removal in the West, such as on the Klamath and Snake Rivers. Learn more in this OPB documentary.
Cost: $200 includes outfitters fee and lunch, Limit 12 rafters.

10:00 am – 1:30 pm
Washington Park Outing
End your Portland experience by visiting any of these attractions: the Oregon Zoo, Portland Japanese Garden, Hoyt Arboretum. Participants will meet at the Hyatt Convention Center and take the tri-met light rail to Washington Park Station.
Cost: Individuals will purchase their own MAX line rides ($2.50 per ride) and entrance tickets.
Garden: $21.95 adult/$17.95 student; Arboretum: FREE; Zoo $24 (must purchase in advance!)