This is what it looks like to be four.
November 24 2023 Work Party (four years)
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 hawthorn debris. Mulch is laid over all the compost we spread, thickness sacrificed, the work left undone reaching us into the future, binding us to return to this place with intention. We leave with incantations of joy, wishing that all beings be well, wrapping ourselves and the new baby trees with love.
April 1, 2023 Work Party
A song for you.
March 4 2023 Planting Work Party
“We don’t see things as they are. We see things as we are.” –Rabbi Shemuel ben Nachman
The feedback feels personal and harsh, landing hard after more than a year of working diligently to be present to partner needs and desires. The path with this child feels dark and thorny. And this world. We cannot seem to change in the face of overwhelming evidence that things are not well.
Delusion gets in the way of clear seeing, of knowing the questions to ask, of discernment. We grasp for the one perfect something we believe will erase all our suffering. We cause ourselves so much suffering.
“This moment or this place is as perfect as it can be.” –Father Richard Rohr
Happiness can only be given in this moment and this place, with the hard feedback, with the conflict with this child, with all that is wrong with how we have organized our lives together. Winding among these things, inextricably entwined, is all the joy, love, empathy, belonging, courage, and everything good we could ever hope to find.
“This is a tale about the brilliant betweenness that defeats everything, corrodes every boundary, spills through marked territory, and crosses out every confident line.” –Bayo Akomolafe
Here in this brilliant betweenness we create together, we can see with fresh eyes. The scales drop, we are allowed to be, nothing is wrong. Here we accept the invitation to rethink everything, to meet ourselves as if for the first time, to not only imagine but also to create the more beautiful world of our yearning. We do this in fits and starts, separated by days and weeks, both pressing out and inviting in the world from which we’ve come.
Today we have come together doing our clumsy best to use the tools of that world to sculpt something new. We plant trees, making sure their roots are not tangled, protecting them with mulch and metal cages. We practice hope. It is magic.
Then all too quickly the mulch pile is tidied, the tool trailer packed away, and we’ve fallen apart to rest and to take the magic we created in the brilliant betweenness to other people and places.
A Red-breasted Sapsucker rat-a-tat-tats on a metal park sign.
This can be yours, I say. I am all okay with all this being yours.
There is peace in letting go.
There is joy in traveling together.
Until next time.
January 28 2023 Work Party
Thistle and yellow arch angel and reed canary grass and Himalayan blackberry. Beautiful plants from other ecosystems who have found their way to ours and managed to disturb the balance of here. We clip, dig, and pull against loss of biodiversity and habitat, dirt on gaiters and layers and foreheads, snags on sweaters, connection vibrating the space between us. Himalayan blackberry roots resist our removal efforts, breaking under the soil, absconding with the energy required to push up new shoots at some later time. Tiny spiders, deep rusty orange with two stripes ringing their abdomens, scrabble across mounds of soil that must seem like mountains, a woolly bear curls defensively in my hand, everyone ferried to the safety of a gently weeping Western Red Cedar. On a field trip past the corner of the neighbor’s chain link fence, we slip by the adolescent conifer trees that stand between us and the beyond onto a bed of laid-down reed canary grass, and tears viscerally rise up as I gaze upon Himalayan blackberry brambles as far as the eye can see. This time hope comes in the form of your openness to coming back to face the brambles with me for as long as it takes. Together is the only way I know to do this.
February 27 2022 Work Party
Stepping up and into new beginnings. Kneeling on soil beneath a young Western Red Cedar, tenderly disentangling shallow Himalayan blackberry root balls from ki. Prayer. Strangers turned connections, connections family. Magical alchemy. Rain. Dry shelter under branches that honor both earth and sky. Dirt on knees, shirts, masks, boots. Wet hair plastered to foreheads, dirt there, too. Pulling up yellow arch angel tangled into mats carpeting the forest floor. Tall Oregon grape stand sentry, watching as we come and go.
first baby trees
Quinn, our favorite City of Kenmore parks person, planted four baby Western Red Cedars–our first native plantings!–in our second restoration area recently. One of the plantings, a grouping of a baby and a baby baby, got a protective cage today, and the rest we will monitor for grazing to determine if caging will be necessary for all the new plantings in this area. A big, heartfelt thank you to Whitney Neugebauer and Whale Scout for donating the cage materials, teaching me how to construct and install a cage, and continuing to inspire me with her passion and heart for killer whales, salmon, healthy watersheds, and experimenting her way through this work in community.
Stop by Wallace Swamp Creek Park to say hello to our new trees (just north of the park entrance on 73rd Ave NE). And join Whale Scout for land-based whale watching or habitat restoration. Or both!