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Our Newest Family Member
We call trees like you volunteers. You are that, you came to us without our choosing, you opted to be here, alive and thriving where you landed. For this, you are a volunteer, and you are so much more. You are a serendipitous gift, the hope we need, more than we deserve. You are the best kind of example. You are connection and unconditional love. Thank you for being here. May you thrive in your new space.
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April 23 2022 Work Party
What beauty is in our care! Thank you for showing up for the earth and for us.
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April 17 2022 Work Party
All of nature is awakened. The cycle of renewal begins again.
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April 4 2022 Work Party
The knotweed has awakened. Buoyed by spring birdsong, we dig it with renewed vigor. Every two weeks, forever, or maybe for ten years. Until we have made whole what has been broken. This is the collective work of right now. Thank you for showing up. Until next time.
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March 27 2022 Work Party
This is how we make a difference. One moment at a time. Together.
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March 19 2022 Work Party
The rain is steady and there is war. Bombs fall. Red banners announce the latest of the emergency we have spilled from within. The red stays tucked in my heart as I travel where birds nest, frogs sing, and water finds its way from mountain to sound. I dig root balls while you clip canes. The rain lightens, I hang my coat in the crook of a cottonwood tree. Ossoberry blooms, elderberry not far behind. Gartner snakes sleep, yellow striped millipedes unfurl everywhere. Decomposing wood on its way to new life. Bombs still rain half a world away, red banners surely still where I left them. For the moment, I…
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March 6 2022 Work Party
Grey shifts blue. Beautiful earth, beautiful people. Belonging.
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February 27 2022 Work Party
Stepping up and into new beginnings. Kneeling on soil beneath a young Western Red Cedar, tenderly disentangling shallow Himalayan blackberry root balls from ki. Prayer. Strangers turned connections, connections family. Magical alchemy. Rain. Dry shelter under branches that honor both earth and sky. Dirt on knees, shirts, masks, boots. Wet hair plastered to foreheads, dirt there, too. Pulling up yellow arch angel tangled into mats carpeting the forest floor. Tall Oregon grape stand sentry, watching as we come and go.
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February 19 2022 Work Party
I didn’t know I would meet you. I didn’t know you would come if I asked. I didn’t know if you would be where I usually find you, tucked under the vine maple. I didn’t know the rain would hold. I didn’t know relief would arrive with three sturdy wheelbarrows in a tool trailer. I didn’t know you would tell me we are all connected, that we need each other. I didn’t know you would be my mirror. There was so much I didn’t know it filled an ocean, spread to the stars, bled 13.8 billion light years away. But by the time the last sodden cardboard was laid, the…
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February 6 2022 Work Party
A warm spring sun. Birdsong. Bare branches striking against a bright blue sky, their very tips yearning for the center of the solar system. Tightly furled ossoberry buds crown thin, delicate branches. Leaf skeletons nestle among sodden leaves, all decaying into something new. A small rat, dead on the side of the road. Tiny front paws curled, body still soft. A final resting place, shrouded in leaf litter, in the crack of a fallen tree. Himalayan blackberry thorns etch their secret language on bare skin, a protest, perhaps, in dots and dashes at being severed from the earth. A hawk, a juvenile we think, circles above us, wing tips touching…
