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Four years
Today marks the four year anniversary of Swamp Creek Habitat Restoration Project. We do this work on the ancestral land of the first peoples of this region — the Coast Salish, the Muckleshoot, the Duwamish, the Snoqualmie, the Sammamish, the Stillaguamish, the Suquamish — peoples who have stewarded this land since time immemorial and who are very much alive and present as good stewards of the land to this day. It is with gratitude to and because of them that we have the honor of tending to this land with the hope of restoring it to a healthy ecosystem where native insects, fish, birds, and mammals, including humans, can be…
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November 18 2023 Work Party
“So war and peace start in the human heart. Whether that heart is open or whether that heart closes has global implications.” — Pema Chödrön
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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…
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October 7 2023 Work Party
First meetings. Tree branches swoop to make swings. The forest swallows children, spits them out. A cardboard brigade. Small feet stomp mulch. The children become lost to the creek. You arrive. We begin as we left off, the mulch pile moved, canes cut, root balls dug. Pill bugs and spiders scrabble over rick, dark earth, a dear long-toed salamander travels from glove to arm on ki‘s way to safe shelter. Canes moved by clipper, the last ripe blackberries of the season foraged, a heavy chain pulled from the brambles, a crushed frying pan declared non-native. Our time together inevitably comes to a close and most of you have ridden away,…
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September 9 2023 Work Party
We push back Himalayan blackberry regrowth in preparation for layered mulching. Forsythia and boxwood are trimmed, salmonberry and elderberry discovered under weeping brambles of blackberry. The weed wrench takes a stellar turn at pulling up bamboo, ferns are liberated from canes that have been hiding in their fronds. Ivy is pulled, knotweed surveyed, trash in the creek contemplated. So much is in our care.
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August 12 2023 Work Party
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July 29 2023 Work Party
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…
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July 8 2023 Work Party
Nature is all around us.
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June 3 2023 Work Party
Love matters.
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May 13 2023 Work Party
Gently pulling blackberry canes away from baby ferns, tending to a rescued Douglas fir, moving in and out of the coolness of the shade. A field trip to the west side of the creek to visit with goats in the unsheltered heat of midday. Pulling brambles out of trees, the smells of English hawthorn and Herb Robert mingling in the air like death. A root ball ferried away to become something else, perhaps art, as we drift apart until next time.
