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 took a field trip this week to the main entrance of ƛ̕ax̌ʷadis Park for a special restoration work party in partnership with the City of Kenmore, Confluence Environmental Company, and Mid Sound Fisheries Enhancement Group. We worked in a wetland area on the peninsula between Swamp Creek and the Sammamish River to remove reed canary grass, yellow flag iris, and Himalayan blackberry so that native rushes, sedges, and willow can continue to establish themselves there. It was a treat to work in a different location and off the boardwalk and an honor to tend to a wetland. We’re looking forward to going back in three months!
Cool, tentative rain. A line of sentinel blackberry canes, dug. Root balls, gnarled and long. Goat neighbors munch tender shoots of reed canary grass. Entwined Western red cedars and ferns in their new homes. Beautiful child dancing through the planting, hiding from the wind, noticing everything.
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 gather to connect before falling away to rest so that we may return again, over and over, for as long as it takes.
“The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment, not the other way around.” –former Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson
In 1970, Gaylord Anton Nelson, a United States Senator from Wisconsin, organized the first Earth Day as a national demonstration to raise awareness about environmental issues. At the time, there was no Environmental Protection Agency, no Clean Air Act, no Clean Water Act, no legal or regulatory mechanisms to protect the environment.
People across the country rallied on April 22, 1970, spurring the United States to create the Environmental Protection Agency by the end of that year, and that day, April 22, is now an annual celebration that honors the achievements of the environmental movement, reminds us of the importance of protecting and caring for the earth, and calls us to action.
This Earth Day we reflected and shared with one another:
What are some of the environmental issues you care about the most? What environmental issues can you see playing out in your community? How can we protect and restore local ecosystems?
I am so honored to be in this work with you. Happy Earth Day!
A song for us. We belong together — for these past three years, for many more. For always.
***
We had a special guest at our third anniversary work party — constant, steady, wonderful, life sustaining rain. We felt the drumming of ki on hoods and hats, watched water meet wetland, observed ki seeking Swamp Creek in sinuous, braided strands over grass and rock and mud. All the while, clippers and shovels met blackberry canes and earth, carving out space for hidden ferns holding on and exiled plants we will one day invite back. Robins skittered across wet earth, snails nestled in the reed canary grass. It was wet and cold, and it was good.
I wish I had the words for anything at all. Instead feelings pile up, crashing against the inside of my skin. I wonder if you see the quickening. I wonder if you know what I cannot name.
Supplication.
I want to be in a different world. A world that knows slow. A more beautiful world, a world where we are wrapped in the magic of stars. I want us to know discernment. I want us to be wise.
Intercession.
Names flow like water over stones. They float on downy wings, whispering protective incantations into the air we breathe. We come together and fall apart, the whole of us shifting, fluid. Gifts come wrapped in brown paper bags. The youngest among us works away a clearing. Now this patch of earth can breath. Now so can we.
Rain.
I need this world, this one we make together. Here we have no need for perfection. Here we are human. We return to each other, to this earth, again and again, to feel out together what it is all becoming.
