The Life of Ashes

Program Notes:

Commissioned by the US Forest Service to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Wilderness Act, the Life of Ashes was inspired by the words of the Act itself, “A wilderness…is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.  As such, the natural process of nature, life, death, and rebirth march on with minimal interference.”  The piece explores the idea of nature’s natural process through the lens of the September 2012 fire that searingly ravaged part of the mountain, the regeneration of botanical life and the activity of the living beings that have returned to the scorched forest.