For the first ever Festival of Belonging at Wild River State Park, acclaimed poet and storyteller Rosetta Peters and composer JG Everest led two site-specific poetry workshops along the River Trail north of the River Access area, connecting with a wide variety of local community members who were interesting in exploring their creativity in this spectacular setting. Each writer picked a spot that resonated and called to them, and then spent creative time listening, noticing, and writing there. Then, everyone gathered and “toured” to each writer’s spot, where the poems were read aloud in the place they were written.
For each weekend day of the Festival of Belonging, these poems are posted along the trail, at the spots where they were written, as a self-guided poetry walk, covering approximately a 1/4 mile of easy trails with some slight elevation changes. Parking available in the River Access parking lot, from which visitors can walk the mowed trail to the gathering space near the river, where one end of the poetry walk begins, and leads north up the River Trail. Visitors can also access the Poetry Walk by walking south from the Nevers Dam overlook on the same River Trail towards the Spring Creek campsite.
