Bozeman Magazine

Fire and drought have become defining aspects of life in the western United States. How are these phenomena changing people internally, how are they reshaping communities, and how are they changing the way we look at the landscape? For eighteen months, composer Scott Ordway traveled widely in California in order to pose these questions to individuals and communities, and between December 2020 and June 2022, he collected 80,000 words of first hand witness accounts of fire and drought from 225 Californians in towns and cities throughout the state. He also took thousands of photographs and hundreds of minutes of video. Drawing on these raw materials, Ordway created the The End of Rain, a multimedia work for chamber orchestra, choir, and landscape photography. Inspired by the work of journalists, filmmakers, documentary and fine art photographers, and social scientists, The End of Rain acts as a conduit for the voices and experiences of other people in order to understand how individuals and communities related to the landscape around them in this new era of continuous fires and the droughts that precipitate them, and attempts to reveal how fire and drought are changing us in personal and often hidden ways. A work of nonfiction, each line of The End of Rain represents one person telling the truth, as they see it, in simple and direct language. Many describe acute experiences of fire or drought. Some lost homes. Others lost loved ones. Others lost meaningful belongings. They lost long-standing beliefs about the landscape and its capacity to shelter and sustain and inspire them. At the same time, people gained things: strengthened community bonds, new appreciation for responsible land stewardship, awareness of past mistakes, and new hope for the possibility of collective action.