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February 4 2023 Work Party
“Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.” –Desmond Tutu Thank you for being the light, my dear ones, and a wellspring of hope.
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January 28 2023 Work Party
Thistle and yellow arch angel and reed canary grass and Himalayan blackberry. Beautiful plants from other ecosystems who have found their way to ours and managed to disturb the balance of here. We clip, dig, and pull against loss of biodiversity and habitat, dirt on gaiters and layers and foreheads, snags on sweaters, connection vibrating the space between us. Himalayan blackberry roots resist our removal efforts, breaking under the soil, absconding with the energy required to push up new shoots at some later time. Tiny spiders, deep rusty orange with two stripes ringing their abdomens, scrabble across mounds of soil that must seem like mountains, a woolly bear curls defensively…
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January 16 2023 Work Party MLK Jr Day of Service
“Everybody can be great…because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.” –Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., speaking before the Ebenezer Baptist Church in 1968 It was an honor to serve alongside you. Thank you with every part of my being.
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January 7 2023 Work Party
Cut English hawthorn hauled. Cozy rooms carved out of a tangle of Himalayan blackberry. Wondering who might dwell under a small mound of decaying wood. We met here in this new year, full of possibility, under the blessed, wondrous rain, to give each other the gift of being alive together.
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December 17 2022 Work Party
A Benediction “May the roots of suffering diminish. May warfare, violence, neglect, indifference, and addiction also decrease. May the wisdom and compassion of all beings increase, now and in the future. May we clearly see all the barriers we erect between ourselves and others to be as insubstantial as our dreams. May we appreciate the great perfection of all phenomena. May we continue to open our hearts and minds, in order to work ceaselessly for the benefit of all beings. May we go to the places that scare us. May we lead the life of a warrior.” –Pema Chödrön, from The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in…
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December 11 2022 Work Party
With your presence and grace, you plant me more firmly in this, my chosen place.
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December 3 2022 Work Party
Most of the English hawthorn in our original restoration area has been cut down – thank you Quinn! – to make way for a planned planting this spring. We clipped, sawed, and hauled tree limbs in wheelbarrows, as many as two hearts and four hands could, through beautiful white snow. Red berries dropped like jewels into sparkling cold puddles. Birds revealed their presence through song. Falling clumps of wet snow sprung branches into oscillations that reverberated the silence around us, the smell of wood smoke hung in the air. A small white dog bound through snow yipping with the pleasure of being alive, a human chasing behind. Little snow people…
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November 25 2022 Work Party (three years)
A song for us. We belong together — for these past three years, for many more. For always. *** We had a special guest at our third anniversary work party — constant, steady, wonderful, life sustaining rain. We felt the drumming of ki on hoods and hats, watched water meet wetland, observed ki seeking Swamp Creek in sinuous, braided strands over grass and rock and mud. All the while, clippers and shovels met blackberry canes and earth, carving out space for hidden ferns holding on and exiled plants we will one day invite back. Robins skittered across wet earth, snails nestled in the reed canary grass. It was wet and…
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three years
Today marks the three year anniversary of Swamp Creek Habitat Restoration Project. We do this work on the ancestral land of the first peoples of this region — the Coast Salish, the Muckleshoot, the Duwamish, the Sammamish, the Stillaguamish, the Suquamish —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 ecosystem where native insects, fish, birds, and mammals, including humans, can be sustained and thrive…
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November 13 2022 Work Party
We honor, on Orca Recovery Day, Tahlequah (J35), daughter of Princess Angeline (J17), sister to Moby (J44) and Kiki (J53), mother to Notch (J47), Ti-Tahlequah (no J number assigned), and Phoenix (J57). We remember the death of Ti-Tahlequah less than half an hour after her birth in 2018. We tell the story of Tahlequah’s grieving, how she carried Ti-Tahlequah’s lifeless body on her rostrum for 17 days while traveling approximately 1,000 miles with her pod around the San Juan Islands and interior waters of British Columbia. We recount how Tahlequah dove deeply to retrieve Ti-Tahlequah’s body when the dead calf slid from her and sank, how members of her pod…
