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April 10 2021 Work Party
Nothing Wants to Sufferby Danusha Laméris after Linda Hogan Nothing wants to suffer. Not the wind as it scrapes itself against the cliff. Not the cliff being eaten, slowly, by the sea. The earth does not wantto suffer the rough tread of those who do not notice it. The trees do not want to suffer the axe, nor see their sisters felled by root rot, mildew, rust. The coyote in its den. The puma stalking its prey. These, too, want ease and a tender animal in the mouth to take their hunger. An offering, one hopes, made quickly, and without much suffering. The chair mourns an angry sitter. The lamp, a scalded moth. A table, the…
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March 27 2021 Work Party
Little hands do important work. They find the smallest friends nestled in the soil and insist on safe haven for them. They stay present and persist and with determination dig roots longer than they are tall from dark, rich earth. They are filled with wisdom. I help, but work mostly to stay present to their journey. It’s an important one. And important for me to practice simply being alongside another–witnessing. Birds call to each other around us, clouds pass through a pale blue sky, robins engage in territorial dispute, a downy woodpecker stands sentinel. For some blissful moments that stretch to hours, it feels like we might just be all…
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February 27 2021 Work Party
We’ve started removal of a second large patch of Himalayan blackberry at Wallace Swamp Creek Park! What satisfying progress can be made by small, dedicated groups of people. What a balm such kinship is during this pandemic time. We found gifts in every bit of earth reclaimed–Oregon grape growing all this time under the thick blackberry bramble, brilliantly orange witches butter on the side of a decaying stump, luscious green moss blanketing a fallen tree. And then a walk to the creek revealed another gift: a pair of hooded mergansers, surfing the riffle and then coming to rest in a pool created by sediment deposits, just being themselves, seemingly unaware…
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resting with the earth
I’ve been feeling sad these past days, so I went to Wallace Swamp Creek Park to ground myself in noticing: The roots of the Himalayan blackberry, so much in appearance like the arteries, veins, and capillaries of our own bodies, stubbornly holding life deep in the soil, waiting for the warmth of the sun to call it to the sky. The heat in my body generated by the work of digging and cutting and pulling. The rain cooling my skin. A round of robins skittering across muddy earth, red breasts carrying forth resilience and hope. Reed canary grass laid down in wetland water. Snowberries, oblong and opulent, dripping from delicate…
