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September 25 2022 Work Party
We dug all the knotweed and pushed back the Himalayan blackberry regrowth. We identified a black locust tree, and once we knew, we saw them everywhere. We limbed up an English hawthorn and pulled up some reed canary grass. We connected, we learned, we grew, we stretched ourselves in all the best ways.
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September 1 2022 Work Party
We gathered at the peak of the mulch pile and learned who we were, rehearsing names until they lodged, like warm, polished stones, into hands and pockets and mouths and hearts. We talked of poop, bullfrogs, and poop again. We decided it wise not to run with clippers, pulled ivy with all our might, created survival rings around trees, plotted to return with saplings to grow the forest under our care. We worried over everything – the harm we do even as we care so very much and have the best of intentions to restore–the plants inadvertently clipped, the salamander tail severed, the bugs suddenly without home, the soil disturbed.…
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August 20 2022 Work Party
A song for you.
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August 13 2022 Work Party
Trailer, wheelbarrows, and root slayers. Canes pulled from ground and sky. Digging, cutting, sifting. Thorns drag across skin. Trees released. A clearing.
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August 6 2022 Work Party
The work goes on even when I am not there, all of you picking up the threads to weave them together into a beautiful whole, all on your own. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
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Watering Our Baby
It has been hot, hot for people, hot for salmon, and hot for trees establishing their roots in new homes. I’m so glad you are with us, little Doug fir. It is such an honor to care for you through this blistering hot heat. I love you.
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July 25 2022 Work Party
It was a joy and delight to work alongside the Gloria Dei Lutheran youth group. Their curiosity, steadfastness, and eagerness both to learn and help was a balm in these sometimes troubled and troubling times. They reminded me of the goodness that exists everywhere, both within and without.
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July 16 Work Party
A low current of anxiety hums through at least half the days, sometimes even the days I go to one of our restoration sites to prepare for you. And then I see you. My heart grows a bit every time–when you arrive, two kids and dog in tow; when you walk across the parking lot toward me; when I find you sitting in the dirt, digging out the finest filaments of knotweed root; when you offer to sharpen our tools from the back of your truck; when you embrace the root slayer I offer; when you grow the circle we stand in; when you come for the first time; when…
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July 2 2022 Work Party
“The principal point of this book is not that the salmon is a magnificent animal that holds its own compared to anything on the Serengeti–beautiful in its many phases; thrilling in its athleticism; moving in its strength, determination, and courage; poetic in its heroic and tragic life story–and it would be sad if it were to disappear. All that is true, but a more important point is that if the salmon does not survive, there is little hope for the survival of the planet.”–Mark Kurlansky, Salmon: A Fish, the Earth, and the History of their Common Fate If the forecast this year is correct, 10,165 Cedar River sockeye will pass…
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June 25 2022 Work Party
Rain, rain, rain and cool for weeks and weeks and now heat. We dance with the edges of the shade, find refuge in a cool pocket of air held by trees. We identify snowberry, marvel at the fitness of Himalayan blackberry, dig out root balls the size of beaver kits. Hard topics broached, we listen and share with openness and grace. We create the medicine we need in these times: Connection with the earth, with plants, with each other. We fall away with gratitude and warm hearts, knowing we will come together again.
