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.
August 6 2022 Work Party
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 you continue to show up. For a time, the anxiety is distant, quiet. My heart is somewhere outside my body, all around me. I am in my heart center. You have reminded me of the way.
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 through the Hiram M. Chittenden Ballard Locks on their way to Lake Washington. If the forecast is correct, 2022 will displace 2020, when 22,950 returned, as the lowest Cedar River sockeye run on record. If the forecast this year is correct, we are in free fall. Salmon are in crisis. So are we.
The knotweed grows more slowly and seems easier to dig now that the soil is drier. My child tells me excitedly that he is no longer shy now that he is double digits and turns his attention toward happily hacking a holly tree. We have a weed wrench, but the holly trunk is too large, so some of us dig and dig, reconnaissance that shows where the roots are small enough to slay. Others of us look at the Himalayan blackberry grow back and wonder who will prevail and are surprised again that in the end it is us. We dig it all. And then we stand in the rectangular hole where the holly once grew, with smiles bright as stars, and we bask in the glow of having done this thing, not an impossible thing, but a new thing for us that showed that with flexibility, curiosity, and perseverance we can do hard, important things.
I drive the surface streets of Seattle on the way to greet my loves. Traffic is heavy, and I will be late but I play with not worrying about it. There is so much to worry about–our collapsing climate, unnecessary parking lots, democracy slipping away, salmon on the brink of extinction–that there is no room for adding lateness to the list. I look at the buildings on either side of me when I am stopped by traffic lights, and I notice how close together they are, how varied in style, how unlike they are to the buildings in my own neighborhood. My own beautiful, comfortable neighborhood, sprawling, spread out, requiring copious use of this car I am in, contributing to the problems about which I worry. I wonder how we will grow in a different way. Will we? If we don’t, what will we lose?
My mind wanders into the past. I think about the year I became a volunteer naturalist with the Seattle Aquarium. That year, I lay on the banks of the Cedar River while we talked about where we might see salmon spawning if we were lucky to see them at all. The listlessness of then pushes its way into now, bringing a swell of love, sadness, and tears. These are my loves, I would not change that if I could, and so I live with the pain of witnessing them struggle for species survival, with the sadness that comes from knowing we might lose them still.
Back in the present, I look out the car window, watching people walking their dogs, walking with reusable bags, waiting at the bus stop. Then The Church is on the radio singing Under the Milky Way, and I am pulled to the past again, this time to the 1980s, before I knew about salmon at all. I am in the home ec room where I am learning to bring the liquid measuring cup to eye level to discern whether I have poured in the desired amount, I am crying in the choir alcove, a note filled with adolescent spite and pettiness on my lap, I am hanging upside down on the monkey bars over hard, cracked asphalt. All the yearning of that age–wanting so badly to belong, to not feel awkward, unsure, and misfit–settles over me, jostling about in my crowded mind. If we felt we truly belonged, would it be easier for us to make space for others, too, including salmon?
Finally I am walking on the promenade along Salmon Bay, coming closer and closer to my final destination, the Hiram M. Chittenden Ballard Locks. I am late, but no matter. There are salmon in the fish ladder, and everyone is glad to see me. I spend the next two and a half hours basking in the joy and giddiness of being in the presence of my loves, beautiful salmon, mostly sockeye right now, returning from a long and arduous journey in the ocean to spawn in their natal rivers and streams. I see a handful of chinook smolt in the fish ladder, too, where they are undergoing complex physiological changes to adapt from fresh water to saltwater living, something we cannot see even as it is happening right before our eyes.
People are visiting the Locks from all over. They are from Seattle, from Iowa, from Saskatchewan, from places unknown, and 62 of them spend some of their time in conversation with me. I talk animatedly about my loves, and they ask questions and tell me about themselves in what feels like a fair and connecting exchange. They are heading to Alger, Washington as part of a quest to visit every town in the country bearing their surname. The other Algers are in Michigan and Ohio. They have come from rural Canada, where people are intimately connected to the land for their livelihoods as farmers and loggers, on a coach bus to cheer for the Toronto Blue Jays against the Mariners that night. They are a landlocked people, yet they understand deeply the importance of caring for these ocean-going fish. They have come with a lifetime of experiences, with hopes and dreams, with adventures yet ahead, and our stories intersect on the concrete walkways around the fish ladder. Salmon have connected us all.
I am kneeling at the hardware store, counting trowels as I place them in the basket next to me on the floor, leaving none hanging on the wall. A couple approaches and stops just short of me, watching. I wonder if they too have come for this tool, so I offer one from my basket. No, they tell me. They are simply noticing that I have taken all the available trowels and wondering, too. I tell them that I am working with a group of children and that I want to make sure everyone has a tool, and this seems to hearten them.
If the forecast this year is correct, 10,165 Cedar River sockeye will pass through the Hiram M. Chittenden Ballard Locks on their way to Lake Washington, the lowest in recorded history. These are my loves.
As they go, so do we.
June 18 2022 Work Party
I am grumpy. I am grumpy about the parking lot. I am grumpy that I am grumpy about the parking lot. I am grumpy about the leaked motor oil shining iridescently in puddles on the seasonally wet field. I am grumpy about the proposed development a stone’s throw to the north. I am grumpy that the plans have changed and I don’t know why or how. I am grumpy about the flooding. I am grumpy that not even my phone can distract me, that it points my attention to the hundreds of unsheltered humans who have died in the extreme heat. I am grumpy about the heat, that all those people died needlessly. Why did we let it come to that? I am grumpy that nature has been telling us and telling us and is shouting now and still we are not listening. Instead we are putting things off and filling up gas tanks and building more parking lots. I am grumpy.
I feel no good to anyone or anything.
You approach while my attention is on preparing for your arrival. When I turn to see you, the warmth of your presence washes over me, and I return to myself. One by two by one you all arrive, and we arrange ourselves with no beginning or end before collecting gloves and tools and traversing the field to our restoration area. For the length of our time together, while we dig the regrowth and around the edges and haul and spread mulch, I forget that I am grumpy. Being with you is respite. From myself, from the world outside of the space we have created.
For a time, I am not grumpy. I am in the moment with you.
June 5 2022 Work Party
Presence. Love.
May 8 2022 Work Party
What constitutes success in habitat restoration? Number of volunteers engaged? Collective hours logged? Cubic yards of invasive plants removed? Number of native plants put in the ground? Yes and. How to measure the compassion for the earth cultivated with each work party, the value of hearts turned toward the work of making whole again what we have broken, the deepening of connection to place that comes from revisiting the same small plot of earth again and again, month after month, season after season, noticing when the first leaves fall, the first buds form, birdsong erupts, frogs take up their chorus, the first sleepy detritivores uncurl. How do you measure the movement from here to a new story, from here to a new consciousness, from here to a better tomorrow? How do you know which way to turn on the path after all the easy trails have been mapped and what appears before you is both glaringly obvious and all the grey you’ve ever known? How do you hear the silent call? How do you melt into the arms of the stars, holding on at once tightly and loosely to it all?
How do you keep going in this culture of ours with the most meaningful of work when success is not easy to define?
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 last wheelbarrow of mulch overturned, the last goodbye waved, I knew something more than I had known before. I knew you, for the first time, again, even more. I knew connection to the earth. I knew what it is to feel at home.
December 11 2021 Work Party
“Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.”
— Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart: Heartfelt Advice for Difficult Times
***
Something happens when we come together, something greater than the sum of us. When you arrive, I am on the ground, in my body, watching you. I watch you tumbling out of cars, exchanging shoes for boots, donning hats, zipping coats. You walk toward me with the tools for our work, loppers and clippers and shovels and open hearts. It fills me with such joy that my body cannot contain it, this coming together simultaneously a falling apart, the empty space in my cells exploding beyond my body, shooting away into the air around us.
We stand, six feet apart, and beam at one another. Sometimes even this distance is too much to bear and our bodies press together for a fleeting moment that feels like everything, the warmth of your body becoming mine, the illusion of our separateness shattered.
And then we are apart. I am hovering somewhere above, watching the whole of us. I see something magical, a synecdoche, the universe showing up as us, us as universe. We are electrons and protons falling around a nucleus, the moon attracted to the gravity of the Earth. There is no difference, it is all the same, and from this great height I can see a great coming together.
The night before I had been standing on concrete, watching people stream by, called out into the darkness to enjoy luminaries and each other in this season of receding light and stillness. How are you? you asked, one, two, three times. You look happy, you said, and I realize that I am. I am happy. There are challenges with parenting, with work, with the world, and yet. It is all there, jostling about inside and around me, finding a shifting, sometimes–often?–uncomfortable coming together before falling apart. Sitting in this space, I turn over the happiness I have found in my hands. It is full of cracks and tender spots and bumpy scars. It is mine, and it feels true.
Our work is coming to a close. The first drops of rain fall, the wind folds the tattered blue tarp we use to drag blackberry roots and canes. I look to the south, the sky approaching a velvet wash of steel grey. Do the last thing you need to do to feel done, I suggest, and then we walk to the parking lot together and I look into your eyes. I hope you come back, I say. We fall apart as the rain, cold on my skin, picks up.
You linger, arguing with me about the handling of the blackberry canes we cut from the earth, arguing that our nitrogen-rich soil will gobble them up greedily, arguing that they are not zombie canes that will regenerate if left to compost in place. You argue with me about the barrenness of our sheet mulched areas, calling them apocalyptic wastelands. You tell me that you talk to trees and that they are not happy with how humans have handled all the things. Why would they be? I reply. On that we agree, and then you argue that I don’t take enough selfies. You need to show that you are with the trees! You are a force, look at this badass fuckery you are responsible for, you say. You gesture broadly to the restoration area, to the park, maybe to the world. I stand taller.
And then we fall apart. There is room for it all.
November 14 2021 Work Party
Rain. Garter snakes. Adventure. Layers peeled. Fallen logs. Fungi. Leaves. Soil. Earth. Us.
October 8 2021 Work Party
One person gave voice to a desire. Another person said YES. Several more people came along. Because of one strong, powerful, beautiful young woman, we gathered under a fall sky and found connection to the earth and to each other.
It just takes one.