Featured artist

Name: Julien Pellegrini
Medium: Writing

I grew up in a small rural farming town, a fourth generation Nevada resident along with two brothers, one a professional artist, the other a professional musician, conductor, and composer.  I spent all my time growing up outdoors hiking, camping, horseback riding, studying avifauna, botany, practicing falconry, collecting and studying insects, and studying Northern Paiute survival arts.  I worked for four field seasons out of high school with the Nevada Department of Wildlife believing firmly I would pursue that line of work. It is the study of life on Earth of which I have been and always will be a lifetime student.  In pursuing my ongoing education I changed my career choice and made the decision to pursue biology in the classroom in order to transfer my impetus and ecological sensitivity to kids in order to do the most good.  I am currently enrolled in Nevada’s system of higher education pursuing a secondary education degree.  I leave Reno behind on weekends, holidays, summer, spring, and winter breaks to return home to green fields and tall mountains of Mason Valley in which Yerington lies.  It is there I find inspiration to do my art, from melancholy daydreams of my childhood to that something in the wind there that whispers a different tune than anywhere else on Earth.

Bonneville Hair

The wind played on you, it bent and swayed you,
The sun shone through you, the day once saw you,
Song and firelight once embrace you,
Salt spray, flowers, and morning bird calls from distant flocks,
As sun bathed far away mountain giants, tall and great,
Immersed your reddish hair in ancient things you once took for granted. 

This strand of hair in a band of cave dirt locked away,
Found among layer after layer of baskets and string,
And pretty rocks which once caught your eye, paid for with another pretty thing
On an archaeological dig, in hopes to recover your past,
Where dust and sand took over at last, where little of your world remains,
Came to he who could understand you and the world’s sad absence of your presence. 

The life that was once in you, the air you breathed and salt on the breeze,
The grass that swayed, the days you aimlessly wasted all surfaced one day,
As my brother patiently uncovered you, and showed you the sun once more,
As the air once more breathed life into your strands and played gently with your locks,

A laugh emitted between two worlds, out of range, out of grasp,
To see once more the day waste away leisurely as did extinct Lake Bonneville while you slept. 
Alike your name for the inland sea, Bonneville has died and transformed into dust,
The great conifers that swayed in dusky twilight as you sang and danced,
Once alive with wolf’s serenade, abundant with game and silent gentle spirits,
Like whitecaps and salt foam, have gone where vast salt scrub now thrives,
Where gulls sang, and blackbirds in rusty hinge voices rejoiced in morning sun,
Where legends died, whirlwinds dance and sing, and keep watch as you sleep. 
The grouse gone, cheetah, and trees, your songs and people with them,
Your language and stories, memories and dreams, hopes and fears,
Your extinct people, like the inland sea dissipated into desert heat forever.
Then like a ghost in the dark, disturbed from rest, stirred by a kindred spirit,
Brought to life, brought back to the light, given one last glimpse of the world left behind,
Held in hands, grew immediate equal adoration, you came to one who could understand in silence,
For you listened and listened but could hear no familiar voices, geese, stilts, blackbirds, or gulls. 
With this strand of hair which once heard the roar of drums and the chatter of children,
The dreams of a lover told in sacred secrecy, the drone of ancient wind, the voice of raven,
For this fleeting instant, in an alien world, an extinct ghost brought to life by Evan,
With fervor for ancient voices silenced with a depth of time beyond comprehension,
To listen in silence to the secret wish for repatriation, respect, and empathy,
From this red strand of ancient hair, he took to heart the unspoken words in an extinct tongue. 
In that moment, as dust rose on warm desert wind, a voice called out between the worlds,
Leave and leave the cave entrance in secret, leave the dead lake
And leave us too. Leave our spirits in peace. Leave the rocks who are our elders.
Leave us to dream of when our hair once danced upon a soft summer breeze.
Leave us and respect us.  Leave us in this lonely desert grave.
Leave us and leave the desert you travel upon in peace, and like us, leave no trace.