by
Johan Carlisle
As an investigative journalist, I felt the need to cover political/environmental topics. Most of my stories involved issues of great importance to the Earth. Telling a story is one way of informing people. Making a movie is another way. I suspended my reporting and enrolled in film school, where I learned how to make a story come to life through writing, images, music, and connection. Working with some of the most talented people in the San Francisco Bay Area, I was able to complete my film education, and wait patiently for the right project to show up that could use my skills as a musician writer and filmmaker.
The Mattole River Restoration Project found me, and I quickly accepted the assignment to document salmon restoration on the Mattole River. To do so, I moved there, and lived in the watershed for about 2 years among hundreds of families who lived in this deeply remote region. As I became more and more entrained to the rhythms of the seasons, the people, and the wildlife, making the film became the love of my life. During those two years, I felt the magnitude of my many years of environmental and spiritual expansion reach a completely balanced and ecological mind-space. I not only learned about living in a watershed from the residents there, some whose families had settled hundreds of years ago, and some who had settled in the 60s back to the land movement; but I also learned from the trees, animals, and climate. My life will forever be entwined with the cycles of life in the Mattole River Valley.