A RIVERS project · Source to sea
The Living Nooksack River
A source-to-sea project — film, book, and thesis
The Nooksack begins in ice and ends in salt water, and somewhere along that seventy-four miles, she has taught me most of what I know about paying attention.
This project is an attempt to listen back — to follow her from headwaters to delta, and to sit with the people in relationship with her: fishers, restoration workers, scientists, longtime neighbors, and the tribal communities whose care for this river predates all of ours. It takes three forms: a short film called Return, a visual book, and a master’s thesis in cultural anthropology.
Different registers, same relationship.
The Living Nooksack River
Thesis M.A., Cultural Anthropology · Western Washington University
Images from the field
Spring 2027 · The homecoming
Next spring, all three come home together — the film finished, the book in hand, the thesis defended — with a gathering to mark it, the way you’d mark any homecoming.
Dispatches from the basin
Exploration · Dispatch
One Headwater
There is no one true headwaters here, which is to say there is no one true story. Walk a hundred yards along the ridge and the drainage you called the source slips a little east or west. Follow another creek down and you’d be writing about a different river entirely.
Environment · Dispatch
Along the South Fork
We walk down the bank. Hundreds of coho salmon sit in the river’s channel. From pool to pool we move as they hold up and await to spawn.
Culture
Tending Grief: A Ceremony on Clearwater Creek
A small tree stood over the bank. Someone said the words vigilance and care, back to back, like they belonged together. One voice in the circle talked about collectively holding the rights of nature — not owning them, holding them, the distinction doing a lot of work in one sentence.
Help carry it
I’ve carried this mostly alone so far. That was never really the point.
A river runs through more lives than one, and this project only gets to be honest if it grows to include some of them.
— William Henkel
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New dispatches from the Nooksack, and first word on the film, the book, and the gathering.
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Follow the river to the sea.
New dispatches from the Nooksack, and first word on the film, the book, and the gathering.