I’ve been feeling sad these past days, so I went to Wallace Swamp Creek Park to ground myself in noticing: The roots of the Himalayan blackberry, so much in appearance like the arteries, veins, and capillaries of our own bodies, stubbornly holding life deep in the soil, waiting for the warmth of the sun to call it to the sky. The heat in my body generated by the work of digging and cutting and pulling. The rain cooling my skin. A round of robins skittering across muddy earth, red breasts carrying forth resilience and hope. Reed canary grass laid down in wetland water. Snowberries, oblong and opulent, dripping from delicate branches over rushing water. A river undoing the scar of what we had done to it not so many months before, defying our impulse to control. The muted earth palette of reds, browns, and grays. The whisper of something. “You are held,” the bare tree branches against the cloudy sky tell me. “The sadness is okay,” says the water cascading over boulders and wood. “It is all okay. You are held.”
hatching a planting plan
I met a friend and neighbor, Jeremy Jones, at Wallace Swamp Creek Park today to dream about planting in our restoration area. We surveyed the surrounding vegetation, noting which trees and shrubs were native and which were not. We assessed the existing canopy and assigned one area to shade and another to sun. I had squished through the clover-covered field to our mulched area, mud coating my boots, a trail of size 7 pools of water left in my wake, and I remembered what time of year the ground is saturated and what time of year it is dry. I learned that a simple hole can be useful to assess soil type and condition and that even slight changes in elevation can make a difference in how much groundwater fills that hole. While I dug, Jeremy paced to measure how much space we have to plant. We talked browse protection–methods of keeping rabbits and deer from nibbling away young plantings–everything from plastic tubing to metal caging to sacrificial bovine blood.
We considered what ten species might suit the space, and a couple wandered through with dogs and grandchildren–one five years old with a backpack large enough for him to curl into, one seven years old and one inch away from being allowed on a carnival ride that would flip you upside down and make you lose the contents of your pockets if you didn’t follow the rules to empty them first or the contents of your stomach if you were a grown up who could no longer tolerate being flung about at great speeds. The story of an injury was recounted, a face mask ingeniously used as a makeshift bandage. Connections were made with people and water and land as past and present mingled.
Then the grandparents herded the kids to dinner, Jeremy took leave, and I scoured the mulch for evidence of blackberry growth and dug out some of the largest root balls I have ever seen.
When I could see no more new Himalayan blackberry growth to ferret out, I squished through the field to the parking lot and, as is my custom, turned to look at our restoration area. Crows on their nightly migration to Bothell cawed to one another in the sky above, a robin pulled a worm out of the muddy ground, and for one brilliant moment I could feel it–my connection to a greater whole. There was no separation between me and the mud and the birds and the trees and even the Himalayan blackberry canes we have worked so diligently to remove from this one small patch of earth. I felt in my bones what I believe–that we are all, everything and everyone, deeply connected.
new year check in
Himalayan blackberry cane growth in our restoration area remains suppressed. Paint sticks guard over growing baby ferns. Rainfall is held by the earth, allowing it to gently enter the next phase of the water cycle.
All is well at Wallace Swamp Creek Park as we turn the calendar and continue our travels around the sun.
one year
Today marks the one year anniversary of the community-led habitat restoration project at Wallace Swamp Creek Park.
We do this work on the ancestral land of the first peoples of this region–the Coast Salish, the Stillaguamish, the Duwamish, the Suquamish, the Sammamish–peoples who have stewarded this land since time immemorial and who are very much alive and present as good stewards of the land to this day. It is with gratitude to and because of them that we have the honor of tending to this land with the hope of restoring it to a healthy, native ecosystem where native insects, fish, birds, and mammals, including humans, can be sustained and thrive for generations to come.
Swamp Creek will once again run a brilliant rainbow of Pacific salmon someday.
Thank you to my co-founders, Linda Phillips, who loves Wallace Swamp Creek Park as fiercely as I do, and Kenmore City Councilmember Melanie O’Cain, who believed in this project before she was an elected official and who has been my enthusiastic, big YES person since I met her.
Thank you to the City of Kenmore for their collaboration on our community-led project. Official approval to tend to the park, access to a well-stocked tool trailer (pre-pandemic), and wood chip drops have been invaluable to our progress. Thanks specifically to city employees Stephanie Brown, Rita Moreno, and Quinn Proffitt for their support.
Thank you to the Kenmore City Council for supporting volunteer projects in our community and for rolling up their sleeves and hacking away at invasive plants side by side with us. Councilmembers Melanie O’Cain, Joe Marshall, Corina Pfeil, Nigel Herbig, Debra Srebnik, and Milton Curtis all attended one or more habitat restoration events over the past year.
My deepest gratitude to our community for volunteering their time and labor at restoration events, for donating cardboard, for being my co-conspirators in the quest for said cardboard, and for holding the project in heart and mind every step of the way. Thank you for whatever you have been able to do–it all matters so much. This project is truly possible only as we/us. I wish I had written down each of your names from the very beginning so that I could say them now; I didn’t, but I do remember your faces and your spirits and you are all forever part of my heart.
We are currently on pause again as we weather a winter spike in COVID cases, but we will be back. And we’ll keep going for another year and more.
With love and gratitude,
Tracy Banaszynski
November 12 2020 Work Party
One of us tends to a tree by unearthing the Himalayan blackberry root balls that have snuggled under its base. She follows the root balls to their smallest ends, untangling roots like filaments from the soil, excavating them with the care of an archeologist preserving what has been found. To watch her is to see love in action.
One of us sings with the unbridled beauty and joy of the birds she calls by name, all of them family to her. To gather with her and her dear human family with purpose during this time, to hear her voice across the field as we work is to be held in the warmth of true community.
One by one we arrived to do work that adds up to much more than we could have achieved alone.
This is everything, and I am grateful.
October 24 2020 Work Party
Sometimes I wish we could be there together, tending to place, healing wounds, connecting to the earth and to each other, forever. We are in my heart.
A sincere thank you to all who came to help me build the kind of world I want to live in. You are all so needed. And so appreciated.
Until next time. Love and grace, my friends.
October 10 2020 Work Party
We unearthed root balls bigger than child-sized heads, bigger than my fist, not quite as big as my foot. In these root balls we saw brains and hearts and arteries and capillaries. We honored these roots even as we removed them from the earth, embracing it all. We were defenders of place, habitat, native ecosystems, and humankind.
And then there was thunder, lightning, rain, and hail. If you stood still for just a moment, hail bouncing, rain pouring down, you might have deeply felt our inextricable connection to the earth and everyone and everything on it.
It was good.
September 20 2020 Work Party
September 5 2020 Work Party
We admired the tenacity of the Himalayan blackberry as a species and its multiple reproductive strategies. We marveled at the beauty of roots working so hard, curling and twisting and winding, to seek light despite six inches of cardboard and mulch to suppress them. We devised strategies to remove prickly canes without falling victim to sharp thorns, and we did the math that told us that we had found a cane that was the length of 5,000 sisters head to foot if she were to lie down next to it. We stood six feet from one another and realized that was close enough to feel the warm presence of a friend. And we gathered evidence that tiny groups of people working together toward the same goal can, indeed, create mighty change.
Thank you all, for everything.
Summer 2020 Maintenance
Wallace Swamp Creek Park / Kenmore, Washington
Saturday, August 1, 2020
Maintaining our habitat restoration area / before and after