This piece was composed as part of the 48-hour composition challenge at the inaugural season of Composers Sandbox Summer Intensive at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, NY, in summer 2024. It depicts the natural environment in that area of upstate New York: breathtaking streams and waterfalls carving deep gorges into the land, layer upon layer of rock exposed, millennia of history visible alongside the lush green of the present. Water still at work, singing along with the wind in the trees, smoothing those same rocks and staining them vivid orange with iron. Like a seedling nourished by the decaying wood of an old tree, water exists here in the footprint of its own ancestor. Living water painting over its own ghost, hewing memory into the bluffs to be remembered by those to come.

Recording credit: Joanna Ray, flute; Sar-Shalom Strong, piano