-
November 26 2021 Work Party (two years)
Swamp Creek Habitat Restoration Project turned two today. What better way to celebrate than to continue as we began? Thank you to all who came out in the drizzle and rain today. It’s magic when you are there. Happy birthday, us!
-
November 14 2021 Work Party
Rain. Garter snakes. Adventure. Layers peeled. Fallen logs. Fungi. Leaves. Soil. Earth. Us.
-
October 30 2021 Work Party
The ground is saturated again after a dry summer spell, strewn with fallen cottonwood branches and leaves. The Big Leaf Maples have cast down their own humongous fall foliage, sending sky messengers to ground to be devoured by yellow spotted millipedes. Sporocarps are everywhere, disguised by mulch, the bark on fallen branches, in the nooks and crannies of nurse logs and stumps. What was once alive is being returned to the earth to be born anew from rich soil co-created by death. And we are here, witness to and participant in this endless, beautiful cycle of decay and renewal, practicing being human together. With gratitude for all things, until we…
-
October 16 2021 Work Party
Sometimes it is enough simply to show up. Goodness often grows from grounded presence.
-
October 8 2021 Work Party
One person gave voice to a desire. Another person said YES. Several more people came along. Because of one strong, powerful, beautiful young woman, we gathered under a fall sky and found connection to the earth and to each other. It just takes one.
-
September 25 2021 Work Party
Heavy That timeI thought I could notgo any closer to griefwithout dying I went closer,and I did not die.Surely Godhad his hand in this, as well as friends.Still, I was bent,and my laughter,as the poet said, was nowhere to be found.Then said my friend Daniel,(brave even among lions),“It’s not the weight you carry but how you carry it –books, bricks, grief –it’s all in the wayyou embrace it, balance it, carry it when you cannot, and would not,put it down.”So I went practicing.Have you noticed? Have you heardthe laughterthat comes, now and again,out of my startled mouth? How I lingerto admire, admire, admirethe things of this worldthat are kind, and…
-
September 11 2021 Work Party
Blue Oak A meadow ends where all the perpendiculars of a leafy brown river throw themselves up towards blue. The fruits are olive and ocher. Sprays of dark leaves shiver and splash with sun. Lightning scars show where the main, once shaped by flames, was not lost but reduced to fine fists, oak tissue under sheets of earth, sleeping through the storm and teeth of quick-heat. Here it is: the world utterly lovely despite the anguish, despite endless battles. Meanwhile, you have slipped away to yours. My phone is still again. I could call back. I could babble about this testimony to resilience, bent limbs and great elbows of trunk…
-
August 28 2021 Work Party
When a young human wants to show you something–go. Go see the world through their eyes. You won’t be disappointed. Until next time, with gratitude for all of you.
-
August 14 2021 Work Party
The world is on fire: right now the Western U.S, Canada, Italy, Turkey, Greece. Where else? It’s possible that Finland is still burning, that the fires of Siberia continue to smother the North Pole with wildfire smoke not seen there, in recorded history, until now. While wildfires burn, ice and frozen ground melts. We cannot be sure, as temperatures continue to climb, that the Arctic tundra will remain permanently frozen year round. And now the air currents over the Atlantic Ocean, including the Gulf Stream, may be shutting down. As these events unfold, it is increasingly difficult to see them as isolated or to deny that we are experiencing their…
-
July 25 2021 Work Party
The scratches on my arms remind me that I touch the world and the world touches me. Here, with you, is where I am meant to be. Thank you.
