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Tree Rings #31 Wants Your Words and Art

The Yuba Watershed Institute's community journal is gathering essays, poems, drawings, photos, and wildlife sightings for issue #31, its first in five years. The theme: how you relate to the natural world around you. All ages welcome.

Yuba Watershed InstituteOctober 15, 2026
A fanned, overlapping spread of eleven past Tree Rings journal covers, issues #20 through #30, showing pen-and-ink drawings, a linocut of a mountain lion, and a collage of autumn leaves

For more than three decades, Tree Rings — the journal of the Yuba Watershed Institute — has gathered essays, poems, art, and natural history from the Yuba watershed. After a five-year pause, we're putting together issue #31, and we'd like to hear from you.

The theme: how you relate to the natural world

We are surrounded by an amazing diversity of life, both flora and fauna, that we love, ponder, and explore. Sometimes it feeds us, and sometimes it overwhelms us. Do you stop and really look? How does it affect you? What do you pay particular attention to? What are you afraid of? What are you thrilled by?

We're looking for short snippets that speak to you: a page or two of writing, or a sketch that shares your discovery and your thoughts. Perhaps a poem. Perhaps a photo. The editors will have to pick and choose, and lots of good material might mean a fatter edition.

What to send

  • Essays and stories, up to about 1,000 words
  • Poems
  • Drawings, paintings, and photographs
  • Sightings: a paragraph or two about something you noticed — a hawk, a bear, the first trillium

Give it your best shot. We welcome work from all ages, and we especially welcome work from people who live on or have strong ties to the San Juan Ridge and the Yuba watershed. Put yourself in it — how does it relate to you?

How to submit

By email: send your work to info@yubawatershedinstitute.org with "Tree Rings" in the subject line. Attach writing as a Word document or paste it into the email. Send images as full-size JPG files, not screenshots. Include your name, phone number, and a sentence or two about yourself.

By mail:

Yuba Watershed Institute
PO Box 2198
Nevada City, CA 95959

Artwork will be returned to the artist when we are done. If you mail original artwork, include a return address — we'll scan it and send it back to you.

The fine print

Please send only your own work. You keep the rights to your work and give YWI permission to publish it in print and online. We can't publish everything. The editors will be in touch with everyone who submits, and we'll check with you before making any edits. Questions? Email info@yubawatershedinstitute.org.

Read the back issues

Back issues of Tree Rings are free to read on our Education & Events page.

YWI is a nonprofit based on the San Juan Ridge that has worked with the Bureau of Land Management to care for the Inimim Forest since 1990.

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