I produced this little 2-minute "Basin & Range" music video as an Ode to Great Basin National Park in far Eastern Nevada Summer 2025. After an intensive week at nature writing camp at Western Colorado University late July, I was inspired to create something poetic, musical, with all the amazing photos that Bob Hartman had taken during our stay in Great Basin National Park this summer, especially his photos of the bumble bees and our Milky Way Galaxy in the night sky. As an International Dark Sky park, remote Great Basin National Park in far Eastern Nevada is a great place for night sky photography! I wrote and sang the vocals over Bob's photos and added some video footage too. We hope you enjoy our little music video Basin & Range: an Ode to Great Basin National Park. It was produced with overwhelming gratitude!
I wrote the poem My Magical Red Flamenco Shoes then, feeling inspired, created a little companion video as part of a class assignment in the MFA Creative Writing Program at Western Colorado University, Summer 2025, which is an amazing program by the way!
I recorded the crickets while walking near sunset at Gettysburg in autumn 2020, stopping to take a few photos that captivated my attention. This image-moment in particular and the sound of the crickets were deeply profound to me in that moment. It was so quiet when we visited there, except for the crickets and the long-silenced canons. This video is 13 seconds ... of Gettysburg crickets.
While in northern Nebraska Summer 2022, I was captivated by the miles and miles of prairie grasses moving in the breeze. When we stumbled across the museum of notorious western writer Mari Sandoz, I could almost hear her voice in the wind. I chose a one-line excerpt from her book Old Jules to overlay on the prairie grass images for this 1-minute video. Sometimes you can hear the wind.
Krystyn Hartman