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