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June 7 2025 Work Party
Boisterous clipping and digging of canes, pulling up a carpet of ivy, young people have brought their older humans along. We add our blackberry and ivy to the raft, ferry more to the field for pick up, get stung by nettles five times. A black-tailed deer grazes across the way. Hard rain starts to fall, scattering some of us, the rest of us carry on. The underground infrastructure of a very old Himalayan blackberry is exhumed, some concrete detritus moved. We leave with so much distance travelled in just three hours.
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May 10 2025 Work Party
We continued clearing a new patch of Himalayan blackberry, started on a patch of knotweed, the stalks of these like giants. Rescued a fern, excavated more trash, were stung by nettles. Fringe cup and large-leaved avens watched from along the trail.
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May 3 2025 Work Party
It feels good to see the tender bright green tufts of new growth on our baby conifers, to see you remove the blackberry regrowth from among them, to watch a black-tailed deer cautiously watch us, to be here with you. This is hope.
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April 12 2025 Work Party
It is always good to be with you.
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March 22 2025 Work Party
Mallards, American robins, Spotted Towhees. An otter, a salamander. Raptors, maybe red-tailed hawks? Willows staked along the south bank just weeks ago budding, osoberry, red elderberry, and snowberry becoming green. We reached the tree that a month ago seemed so far away, revealed a goat track hidden by brambles, pulled barbed wire out of the ground. A collapsing empire, cancer, hospice. These things cannot be left behind, but despite their presence, for a moment that stretches to hours, I feel ease.
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March 15 2025 Work Party
The best problem to have is not enough root slayers.
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March 8 2025 Work Party
You are a gift.
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January 25 2025 Work Party
Crisp cold bright blue sky. Himalayan blackberry canes cut. Reed canary grass trimmed. Tree climbed. You hid. You were found.
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January 20 2025 Work Party
Love in action.
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January 11 2025 Work Party
“Compassion practice is daring. It involves learning to relax and allowing ourselves to move gently toward what scares us. The trick to doing this is to stay with emotional distress without tightening into aversion; to let fear soften us rather than harden into resistance. We cultivate bravery through making aspirations. We make the wish that all beings, including ourselves and those we dislike, be free of suffering and the root of suffering.”–Pema Chödrön, Comfortable with Uncertainty And a song for you.
