• March 19 2022 Work Party

    The rain is steady and there is war. Bombs fall. Red banners announce the latest of the emergency we have spilled from within. The red stays tucked in my heart as I travel where birds nest, frogs sing, and water finds its way from mountain to sound. I dig root balls while you clip canes. The rain lightens, I hang my coat in the crook of a cottonwood tree. Ossoberry blooms, elderberry not far behind. Gartner snakes sleep, yellow striped millipedes unfurl everywhere. Decomposing wood on its way to new life. Bombs still rain half a world away, red banners surely still where I left them. For the moment, I…

  • February 27 2022 Work Party

    Stepping up and into new beginnings. Kneeling on soil beneath a young Western Red Cedar, tenderly disentangling shallow Himalayan blackberry root balls from ki. Prayer. Strangers turned connections, connections family. Magical alchemy. Rain. Dry shelter under branches that honor both earth and sky. Dirt on knees, shirts, masks, boots. Wet hair plastered to foreheads, dirt there, too. Pulling up yellow arch angel tangled into mats carpeting the forest floor. Tall Oregon grape stand sentry, watching as we come and go.

  • February 19 2022 Work Party

    I didn’t know I would meet you. I didn’t know you would come if I asked. I didn’t know if you would be where I usually find you, tucked under the vine maple. I didn’t know the rain would hold. I didn’t know relief would arrive with three sturdy wheelbarrows in a tool trailer. I didn’t know you would tell me we are all connected, that we need each other. I didn’t know you would be my mirror. There was so much I didn’t know it filled an ocean, spread to the stars, bled 13.8 billion light years away. But by the time the last sodden cardboard was laid, the…

  • February 6 2022 Work Party

    A warm spring sun. Birdsong. Bare branches striking against a bright blue sky, their very tips yearning for the center of the solar system. Tightly furled ossoberry buds crown thin, delicate branches. Leaf skeletons nestle among sodden leaves, all decaying into something new. A small rat, dead on the side of the road. Tiny front paws curled, body still soft. A final resting place, shrouded in leaf litter, in the crack of a fallen tree. Himalayan blackberry thorns etch their secret language on bare skin, a protest, perhaps, in dots and dashes at being severed from the earth. A hawk, a juvenile we think, circles above us, wing tips touching…

  • January 22 2022 Work Party

    “Love creates a communion with life. Love expands us, connects us, sweetens us, ennobles us. Love springs up in tender concern, it blossoms into caring action. It makes beauty out of all we touch. In any moment we can step beyond our small self and embrace each other as beloved parts of a whole.” –Jack Kornfield *** Here we are, beloved, healing the earth and ourselves. Where does one end and the other begin?

  • January 17 2022 Work Party / MLK Jr Day of Service

    “I would even come up to the early thirties, and see a man grappling with the problems of the bankruptcy of his nation. And come with an eloquent cry that we have nothing to fear but “fear itself.” But I wouldn’t stop there. Strangely enough, I would turn to the Almighty, and say, “If you allow me to live just a few years in the second half of the 20th century, I will be happy.” Now that’s a strange statement to make, because the world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land; confusion all around. That’s a strange statement. But I know, somehow, that…