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.
“We don’t see things as they are. We see things as we are.” –Rabbi Shemuel ben Nachman
The feedback feels personal and harsh, landing hard after more than a year of working diligently to be present to partner needs and desires. The path with this child feels dark and thorny. And this world. We cannot seem to change in the face of overwhelming evidence that things are not well.
Delusion gets in the way of clear seeing, of knowing the questions to ask, of discernment. We grasp for the one perfect something we believe will erase all our suffering. We cause ourselves so much suffering.
“This moment or this place is as perfect as it can be.” –Father Richard Rohr
Happiness can only be given in this moment and this place, with the hard feedback, with the conflict with this child, with all that is wrong with how we have organized our lives together. Winding among these things, inextricably entwined, is all the joy, love, empathy, belonging, courage, and everything good we could ever hope to find.
“This is a tale about the brilliant betweenness that defeats everything, corrodes every boundary, spills through marked territory, and crosses out every confident line.” –Bayo Akomolafe
Here in this brilliant betweenness we create together, we can see with fresh eyes. The scales drop, we are allowed to be, nothing is wrong. Here we accept the invitation to rethink everything, to meet ourselves as if for the first time, to not only imagine but also to create the more beautiful world of our yearning. We do this in fits and starts, separated by days and weeks, both pressing out and inviting in the world from which we’ve come.
Today we have come together doing our clumsy best to use the tools of that world to sculpt something new. We plant trees, making sure their roots are not tangled, protecting them with mulch and metal cages. We practice hope. It is magic.
Then all too quickly the mulch pile is tidied, the tool trailer packed away, and we’ve fallen apart to rest and to take the magic we created in the brilliant betweenness to other people and places.
A Red-breasted Sapsucker rat-a-tat-tats on a metal park sign.
This can be yours, I say. I am all okay with all this being yours.
It’s been a little over a month since we planted a Douglas fir in our original restoration area at Wallace Swamp Creek Park. Ki is growing well! We are so delighted.
Quinn, our favorite City of Kenmore parks person, planted four baby Western Red Cedars–our first native plantings!–in our second restoration area recently. One of the plantings, a grouping of a baby and a baby baby, got a protective cage today, and the rest we will monitor for grazing to determine if caging will be necessary for all the new plantings in this area. A big, heartfelt thank you to Whitney Neugebauer and Whale Scout for donating the cage materials, teaching me how to construct and install a cage, and continuing to inspire me with her passion and heart for killer whales, salmon, healthy watersheds, and experimenting her way through this work in community.
Stop by Wallace Swamp Creek Park to say hello to our new trees (just north of the park entrance on 73rd Ave NE). And join Whale Scout for land-based whale watching or habitat restoration. Or both!
