Klara Maisch and Debbie Clarke Moderow
I
I’m walking a trail that winds through the boreal forest. Memories live here, settled in images spanning seasons, friendships, years. Her silenced voice. The flash of a fox on the scent of a hare. A spruce tree, standing naked, burned one hundred years ago. An eyelash moon that hovered on the ridgeline. The moon tonight, big and round, beaming through subzero air.
Time is the storyteller who dwells here. Many of her characters are not visible, living as they do beneath this path and high overhead. Time unfurls their stories, casting the hare and the moon and the layered earth in conversations linked by cycles of warming and cooling. During seasons light and dark—and in shadows that linger between.
II
I come to a clearing where the snow is perfect for angels. I lie on my back and sweep my arms overhead, then roll onto my side. Everything looks different. The line of the ridge is a trail now. Land becomes sky. Silhouettes of black spruce are roots underground.
I stand, brush off the snow, and walk on. The moon travels with me to the turn where the ghost tree poses. Moonlight illuminates the legacy of wildfire that raged here. The weathered trunk, twisted and silver, hints at the mystery we share.
Memories mix from the long reach of Time. Stories of love and loss arc through the night. Nothing is still.
III
A double spruce throws split shadows across my path. When did she transform from one into two? One voice went silent, and then another. Their memories mingle among the trees, above the forest floor and below.
The heart of the forest pulses beneath this trail. A community of roots entwines with filaments of fungi. Together they reach for the edge where permafrost thaws, where ice becomes water and life returns to microbes frozen long ago. Their awakening grants new potential to the forest, in a resilient exchange of nutrients, partially understood.
Legacies seep from earth to sky and spill back to earth. My breath mixes with echoes from ages past. Maybe hope lies underground, in places we cannot see.
IV
The moon and I continue around a bend, where a solitary spruce stops me. I pause at the edge of her elegant shadow, and grieve. Linger in a narrative where lines of time do not forage in mysteries unfolding underground. Instead, a bleak storyline weaves in and out of trees. From a starting point to a heated ending where the forest cannot survive.
Despair beckons, but the beauty of this aged spruce responds. Death will come for the hare and the fox and even for this tree, as it will for us all. Yet, a promise emerges. From the turning of the seasons, the spinning of the ages. The bounty that each provides.
V
The moon rises into the distance. The trail winds into a wide alpine valley washed in light. Tiny tracks of an ermine lead me along a narrowing path. Pawprints vanish beneath a swirl of windswept snow, then reappear a bit later. The ermine walked a long way.
Where my small companion wandered, I follow. Into softening tones that fade with each hill ahead. An arc sweeps my imagination skyward, to a place of solace where truth shimmers between earth and air.
I’m floating. In the company of circles.
Solace of Circles
In December 2021, painter Klara Maisch and writer Debbie Clarke Moderow spoke on the phone for the first time. Familiar with one another through monthly ITOC Zoom presentations, they talked about their shared interests in the boreal forest: seasonal shifts, wildfire succession, and nutrient cycling in layers of soil. By the end of that first conversation, they agreed to be pen pals of sorts. Debbie’s words and Klara’s paintings would be the language of a spontaneous call and response.
Debbie began by writing about walking a forested trail. Klara responded with several images suggesting layers of time. That simple beginning sparked a dialogue that revealed each woman’s reckoning with change. Though they still had not met in person, Klara and Debbie discovered they shared lifestyles centered around wilderness—and that each had suffered the loss of a friend whose spirit continued to be woven into the mysterious boreal landscape they call home. Heartened by their unfolding conversation, Debbie and Klara met in person in March. They skied together, followed the tracks of an ermine, and delighted in refining Solace of Circles.
Debbie and Klara’s primary inspiration for this collaboration came from one another. Consultations with scientists Becky Hewitt, Jill Johnstone, and Teresa Hollingsworth enhanced their understanding of cycles in the boreal ecosystem. Becky Hewitt furthered their appreciation of permafrost’s thaw front, where frozen microbes from ages past return to life, with far-reaching implications that span the threshold between earth and air.
Solace of Circles is presented on a small scale, a reflection of Debbie and Klara’s intimate and spontaneous conversation. They are grateful to painter Kes Woodward and writer Peggy Shumaker for their collaborative work Sparks, in its powerful call and response. Solace of Circles is a conversation between an artist and a writer, heightened by the voices of friends Mary Kaye Denkewalter (1953-2021) and Marybeth Wikander (1990-2020).
Solace of Circles appeared in Permafrost Magazine (Issue 45.2, April 2025) and is forthcoming in the book Boreal Forest Stories: Creative Collaborations in the Environmental Arts, Humanities, and Sciences in Alaska (University of Alaska Press, 2027).
Klara Maisch
Klara Maisch documents landscape change in oil paintings created on location. Klara travels to remote regions of Alaska to paint outside, where direct experiences with the processes that shape a landscape inform the visual dynamics in her work. She is currently painting places transformed by wildfires, glacier retreat, permafrost thaw, and advancing treeline. Klara’s paintings have been featured in exhibitions throughout Alaska, California, Washington, and Hawaii. She was honored to receive support from the Alaska State Council on the Arts and The Puffin Foundation for her work with In A Time of Change: Boreal Forest Stories.
Website: klaramaisch.com
Debbie Clarke Moderow
Debbie Clarke Moderow writes creative nonfiction. Her memoir, Fast Into the Night: A Woman, Her Dogs, and Their Journey North on the Iditarod Trail, was awarded the 2016 National Outdoor Book Award in Outdoor Literature and the 2017 Willa Award in Creative Nonfiction. She was honored to participate in ITOC: Microbial Worlds, and to collaborate with painter Klara Maisch in ITOC: Boreal Forest Stories.
Debbie earned a BA from Princeton University (1977) and an MFA from Pacific Lutheran University (2013). Her ongoing writing explores her lifelong relationship to wilderness landscapes in the context of change, both personal and global.
Website: debbieclarkemoderow.com
