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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…
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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…
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June 25 2022 Work Party
Rain, rain, rain and cool for weeks and weeks and now heat. We dance with the edges of the shade, find refuge in a cool pocket of air held by trees. We identify snowberry, marvel at the fitness of Himalayan blackberry, dig out root balls the size of beaver kits. Hard topics broached, we listen and share with openness and grace. We create the medicine we need in these times: Connection with the earth, with plants, with each other. We fall away with gratitude and warm hearts, knowing we will come together again.
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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…
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May 21 2022 Work Party
Giddy with excitement, we sawed an old Scotch broom, exhumed its roots, and packed it lovingly out of the park. In its place, a smattering of brilliantly saturated yellow petals lay at rest on the mulch. The moment before we started, I watched those yellow blooms, delicately folding in on themselves, dance with a bumblebee in the breeze, and I felt a pang of regret for what we were about to do. To take the life from this particular plant in this particular place was good for the whole, on balance. But to disturb the soil, to take the flowers from the pollinator–these things still don’t settle easily in my…
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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…
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April 17 2022 Work Party
All of nature is awakened. The cycle of renewal begins again.
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April 4 2022 Work Party
The knotweed has awakened. Buoyed by spring birdsong, we dig it with renewed vigor. Every two weeks, forever, or maybe for ten years. Until we have made whole what has been broken. This is the collective work of right now. Thank you for showing up. Until next time.
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March 19 2022 Work Party
The rain is steady and there is war. Bombs fall. Red banners announce the latest of the emergency we have spilled from within. The red stays tucked in my heart as I travel where birds nest, frogs sing, and water finds its way from mountain to sound. I dig root balls while you clip canes. The rain lightens, I hang my coat in the crook of a cottonwood tree. Ossoberry blooms, elderberry not far behind. Gartner snakes sleep, yellow striped millipedes unfurl everywhere. Decomposing wood on its way to new life. Bombs still rain half a world away, red banners surely still where I left them. For the moment, I…
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January 17 2022 Work Party / MLK Jr Day of Service
“I would even come up to the early thirties, and see a man grappling with the problems of the bankruptcy of his nation. And come with an eloquent cry that we have nothing to fear but “fear itself.” But I wouldn’t stop there. Strangely enough, I would turn to the Almighty, and say, “If you allow me to live just a few years in the second half of the 20th century, I will be happy.” Now that’s a strange statement to make, because the world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land; confusion all around. That’s a strange statement. But I know, somehow, that…
