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January 19 2025 Work Party
My liberation is inextricably tied to yours, and nature awaits the revolution, too. I’m so grateful that Martin Luther King, Jr brought us together for a day to build the more beautiful world we need. Let’s keep going. Read Martin Luther King, Jr’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963).Learn more about King and beloved community.Nature needs liberation as much as we do.
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December 14 2024 Work Party
The last work party of 2024: We excavated trash, dug Himalayan blackberry roots, pulled ivy, rooted up herb Robert and foxglove. We tucked in baby conifers with blankets of mulch stitched in rings, the Western red cedars in particular need of this tender care under climate change. We felt the wind rush around us, watched a murmuration twist and turn above us. We found a tiny Garry oak pushing out of the ground from an acorn planted on the winter solstice one year ago, put a kite in the air for a fleeting moment, brought a whole vibe. We made space, for the trees and for each other. We arrived…
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March 23 2024 Work Party
Light rain. Root balls, knotweed, holly, mulch. Little lime green frog. Bushtits nest in an adolescent fir tree, chickadees make copious announcements. We dig and haul and break for strawberry knotweed pie. Fireworks of green everywhere around us.
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March 16 2024 Work Party
A copse of trees hides a stand of holly. The youngest among us recruits help, instructs on tools, leads the way. It is warm, too warm for this time of year, we peel off layers, elderberry and red flowering currant bloom weeks earlier than usual. What do the nesting birds make of the unseasonable warmth? An elder wrenches tangled holly roots from between those of a grown cottonwood, we unearth gnarled blackberry root balls nearby, pull up the carpet of ivy. An old Coke can, shards from a broken pane of glass, tennis balls shorn of fuzz. Everywhere we have touched this landscape. A silent bald eagle and a crying…
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February 17 2024 Work Party
“Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. It is an axe you break down doors with in an emergency. Hope should shove you out the door, because it will take everything you have to steer the future away from endless war, from the annihilation of the earth’s treasures and the grinding down of the poor and marginal… To hope is to give yourself the future – and that commitment to the future is what makes the present inhabitable.” ―Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark You help make my present not only inhabitable, but also joyful. Thank you.
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July 29 2023 Work Party
New elders, teens known and new to each other, all new to me. You trickle in, each of you right on time, growing us from six to twenty at our peak. We disentangle layers of black plastic sheeting from roots, wrestle blackberry canes from a conifer and elderberry, activate the pungent sent of Herb Robert as we pull it from the ground. Goats arrive, stunning slot-pupilled eyes pulling us from shade to sun. Our happiness increases by 50%. In the end, reed canary grass stands tall, thistles sharp, there is a sea of blackberry before us, but there is only discernment, no discouragement. This is the work before us. We…
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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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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…
