A Healthy Forest: The March episode of the Tippet Rise Podcast
March 6, 2020
Set on 12,000 rolling acres at the foot of Montana’s highest mountain peaks, Tippet Rise provides a place for people to explore art, music, architecture, and nature—and the connections between these seemingly disparate things. For example, during a chamber music recital beneath the Domo, the acoustic sculptural structure cast from the land beneath it, a red-tailed hawk might wing its way above the audience while a breeze rustling the high prairie grasses creates a subtle accompaniment to the program, which might be the result of a young composer’s creative outpouring—an antidote to his loveless marriage—nearly 300 years before at the foot of the Leitha Mountains in then-Hungary. During a solitary moment in Xylem, the pavilion designed by the Burkina Faso-born architect, Francis Kéré, a guest might observe the structure’s fascinating architecture, inspired by the sacred togunas of West Africa, while crickets chirp nearby on the bank of the babbling Grove Creek. Always, the snowcapped mountains, home to the vast Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness, serve as a profound reminder of the power of nature’s wildest places—and the emotion we experience in response to that reminder might remind us of our own deep and visceral connection to nature.
During the March episode of the Tippet Rise podcast, we explore nature, and we do so through the lens of wildfire and forest ecology. We also explore the connections between the natural phenomena of forest and fire and the community of people that inhabit this extraordinary region, looking at the work these people do, together, to be good stewards of the land and reduce the region’s risk of wildfire. To listen to the episode, entitled A Healthy Forest, please click on “More info” below.
Photo of the Domo at dusk by James Florio. Photo, at the top of the page, of Tippet Rise Ranch Manager Ben Wynthein by Zack Patten.