Meditation 017 | Cascadia

Thank you for being here for the seventeenth installment of this newsletter.

🎵 This month’s piece is in G minor.¹ ²

📷 I took this month’s photo on film in Mt. Hood National Forest.³ ⁴

I invite you to sit with this song, photo, and poem and make them a small part of your day, whether that’s your morning ritual, afternoon break, or your evening wind-down.

As always, if you feel like it, let me know what you think in the comments. I’d love to hear from you.

Thank you again for being here.

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A Poem

Fir

by Henry Dumas⁵

The fir stands.
The man watches.
Its height pierces the low cloud.
Its arms stretch out to the winds.
Its roots walk deep into the earth.
The man watches.
The fir stands.
The man walks away.
“Perhaps you are right,” he says.

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Currently

Reading

• Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement by John Lewis (Powell’s)

• Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr (Powell’s)

• “Trapped in the Trenches in Ukraine” by Luke Mogelson (The New Yorker)

Listening to

• Black Dog by Arlo Parks (Listen)

  • Note: I put all the songs shared in the newsletter into this Spotify playlist

Sharing

• Two additional ambient pieces I wrote for chapters 4 and 5 of

  Elle Griffin
  's new novel, Oblivion:

Oblivion, Chapter 5

Oblivion, Chapter 4

• Another song that was first shared in this newsletter, ‘Wingbeat’, is out now on streaming platforms, via Sonder House.

• I’ve got some other releases hitting streaming platforms in the coming weeks.

1. Cascadia in G minor / Recorded in Logic Pro / Written and produced by Fog Chaser

2. A waltzy but moody little tune that’s technically in 6/8 time, but at times feels more like 3/4. Not too much to note theory-wise — I find that the only thing I tend to do when in the minor key is borrow the dominant 7 chord from the parallel key (so, in this case, D7 from the key of G major). The F# in that chord really asks for resolution to G (the root of the key).

3. Cascadia / 35mm film (Fujifilm Superia / ISO 400) / Mt. Hood, Oregon, USA / Order a print.

4. Learn more about the Cascadia bioregion.

5. From what I can find, this poem comes from his collection Poetry for my People (Southern Illinois University Press, 1971). Learn more about Dumas.