You are a gift.
March 8 2025 Work Party
November 23 2024 Work Party
Thirteen loppers, 11 clippers, 10 root slayers, five little shovels. Four hundred harvested and supplied willow stakes, 116 potted plants laid out by the maintenance contractor. One snake skin, three copies of The Serviceberry, four steady goat feet. 105 Scirpus microcarpus, an unspecified number of harvested willow whips, an uncountable blanket of red cedar seedlings huddled under tiny rectangular skylights. Two fleeting moments of rain, so light it barely whispered. Three hours well spent.
November 2 2024 Work Party
On the precipice. All together now.
February 24 2024 Work Party
Some of my favorite people in one of my favorite places.
January 13 2024 Work Party
Wool socks, silk long underwear, fleece pullover, down coat under lined ski parka. Snow pants and insulated skirt. Mittens, scarf, hat. All of this enough to hold body heat generated by movement. Root slayer as spear, frozen ground splits to reveal dark, soft soil. Conifers frozen in pots planted in the mulch pile, heat generated by thermophillic bacteria releases roots and soil, enough to get a few trees from pots to earth. Determination. Mini-cardboard drive. Initiative. When I am short on hope, I watch how you move through the world and it returns to me in abundance.
November 24 2023 Work Party (four years)
This is what it looks like to be four.
October 28 2023 Work Party
The first trees of this planting season are in new homes, tucked on the east side of Swamp Creek before it bends to find the Sammamish River. Douglas fir, Western hemlock, Grand fir, and Sitka spruce removed from pots, roots unbound and draped over mounds of soil in deep holes, rocks sifted and piled nearby, compost mixed with the earth we found and pressed firmly down. Gentle tugs at the base of 30 trunks confirm they are all securely tucked. One tree in not quite the right home. We decide to move ki a foot over, safely out of the way of passing wheelbarrows full of Himalayan blackberry and English hawthorn debris. Mulch is laid over all the compost we spread, thickness sacrificed, the work left undone reaching us into the future, binding us to return to this place with intention. We leave with incantations of joy, wishing that all beings be well, wrapping ourselves and the new baby trees with love.
March 4 2023 Planting Work Party
“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.
There is peace in letting go.
There is joy in traveling together.
Until next time.
One month!
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.
Our Newest Family Member
We call trees like you volunteers. You are that, you came to us without our choosing, you opted to be here, alive and thriving where you landed. For this, you are a volunteer, and you are so much more. You are a serendipitous gift, the hope we need, more than we deserve. You are the best kind of example. You are connection and unconditional love.
Thank you for being here. May you thrive in your new space.