Finding a Way Forward, United and Strong

Well friends, we are 13 years into this restoration project and the plants are astonishing in their growth, the fireflies are flashing like never before and I cannot believe anyone thinks saving the world is not possible. The challenge is getting the Engine to Turn. How do we do this? How do we bring respect, love and compassion back into the world on a massive scale? I don't know except for one act after another, after another, after another. 

Bottle Brush grass is looking splendorous and offers foliage to caterpillars, seeds to birds and mammals and beauty to all of us. 

The Eight-spotted Forester moth lays her eggs on Wild Grape and Virginia Creeper...

and we find her progeny on the grape vine under the windowsill. The Land is more wild than it ever has been and we love how we feel amongst the wildness. It's like a coming home. 

Young American Persimmons are growing a few female flowers and dropping them as they continue to prepare for the heavy commitment of bringing a seed to fruition.

Blue Flag Iris and Silky Dogwood shade the waters sheltering Green Frogs. The weather didn't work out for an American Toad movement again this year, but next year will be the third try and you know what they say...it's the charm. 

White Avens, a native wildflower, is flowering abundantly in the part shade here, right now, on this Land. We didn't plant them, but the seeds found their way there and planted themselves. Now little sweat bees are seeking bloom after bloom after bloom and finding sustenance. 

Freedom comes with letting plants grow where they want to grow and not keeping them tucked tidily into beds. Edit, sure, but let the plants feel free. Let yourself feel free. It changes everything. 

We enjoy this freedom. Minnie Pearl, our elderly cat, sometimes sits on her rug outdoors with us now (NO hunting occurs). She hated the outdoors after a rough youth, but now in her maturity, she wants to feel the breath of the plants, the breath of the warm winds and the comfort of those who love her. We all can change. 

And so, we do too, we change. We adapt. We pause. We are thoughtful in our response. We grow. We barely know Persimmon South, our second restoration project amongst the beloved power house of conservation work - Arc of Appalachia, but we are anxious to. We planted American Persimmons earlier this spring to start the wildlife habitat restoration of native plants. Steve found the hill top fertile soil eroded at the base of the hill and so we planted there, where nutrients and water collect. With all that feels wrong in this world, we offer our love and our efforts. 
 

We are grateful for the others that do this too. It takes bravery, a risk or perhaps just a desire to say enough sitting on my bum, running around buying things and just get to work remembering where we came from and how we fit into this beautiful world. United Plant Savers is doing just that. 

A portion of this land was strip-mined for coal...

and you can still see the coal seams in the high walls. Thanks to the strength and perseverance of humans to right these wrongs and the hanging on of nature at the edges, this area is diverse, abundant and full of life. 

Amanda Horn's art reminds us of the power of seeds and the power of plants. 

Plants are propagated like this Goldenseal...

and plants, like this Toadshade Trillium, grow and reproduce freely in magnificent, protected forest. 

 

There is our optimism; there is your optimism. Even if they don't translate to hope, optimism is all we need. We can get this engine to turn. We can love one another. We can love the nonhuman life of the world. We can stop stripping the trees from the forests for bourbon oak barrels, for palm oil, for yet another field of soy and corn. We can stop pretending our chocolate is not being harvested by enslaved children or that our electricity comes without a high, high price. We can stop filling in wetlands for another lawn of mowed grass or a place to park extra cars. Let's be mindful. Let's be educated. Let's do our research before we believe what is presented to us on social media. Let's get to work. United and Strong. 

We love you all! Thank you for your good work in the world. 

Soundtrack: I will Find a Way by Jackie Venson

The Miles We Walk

We are well within reach of our 75 mile hiking goal for the month of March and it's our tether....to our physical bodies, to our spiritual bodies, to the much larger than us natural, whole world. We are grateful for the opportunity to be in this world and so we walk and we observe. Sometimes we try to capture our joy in selfies and usually it goes awry. For one...

and then the other...

So, we forget about looking at us and walk anyways. We admire the beauty in the world outside of us, tempering overthinking inside of us. 

Because of our nonconventional schedule, folks sometimes think we don't work, but we do. Steve is the primary money maker as a soil scientist doing soil investigations for septic systems. This boy knows soil and his ability to read the land is beautiful. If you think you know something about soil because you've read a lot or worked a garden, you probably don't. Take it from me, someone learning from someone in tune with his environment and observing soil for many decades, it's a wild ride of learning and unlearning. To make the best use of fossil fuels on far flung jobs and to take advantage of different hiking opportunities, I sometimes go along and watch birds or write while Steve operates his one man gig.

He walks far, he bores holes deep, shallow and often in slop, in all sorts of weather, with all sorts of landowners and is more often challenged than not. Here we visited the Darby Plains not intact at this private residence, but at Battelle Darby where we walked after, large acreages of land are protected and feeling the love and goodness of restoration. 

The farming practices that make homogenous landscapes like the one above also fuel us. We make homemade granola aware of our oats and pepitas and what pecan orchards look like. We buy the best we can with what's available to us, ever aware that our food purchases directly impact the biodiversity of the land surrounding us all. Will our food growing practices continue to improve? We believe so, if enough of us say yes.

On our many miles walked, funded by Steve, fueled by Mother Earth, we observe the simplicity and the resourcefulness of the lives around us. I wonder what the ridges and valleys of tree bark might feel like to Winter Fireflies seeking warmth and protection from cold wind? 

Spring Treetop Flasher Fireflies join the Winter Fireflies in this ridge and valley landscape we have become so enamored with. 

In an almost unbelievable moment of bark exploration, Steve found a Harvester butterfly chrysalis. We find these fascinating butterflies (who live in relationship with aphids and ants in this forest), but this is our first find of their pupation chamber, where enzymes turn the insides to goo and a caterpillar becomes a butterfly. There is magic in miles walked and observations made when the self-mind turns quiet and the awe-mind turns on.

These tree bark landscapes are so like the landscapes we walk.

Rattlesnake Plantain...

and Wild Sedum and moss also find shelter amongst these trees...in the leaves, on the roots, on the bark.

Shelter is critical for survival for all of us. I wonder about human shelter, in my critical thinking, sometimes overthinking mind. Why is it so extravagant? Why is it so big? Why is it not appropriate for weather without complex systems of heating and cooling? I am keenly aware of the multiplicity of over-the-top shelters Steve and I have. I marvel at the shelters created in our waste. 

We reconnect with our Earth ancestry in our walking. We mull over important and hard decisions and sometimes they spill out with clarity:

These four walls cannot contain me and yet they do. They warm me, they dry me, they offer me refuge. We've painted the walls joyful colors and filled the rooms with inspired, treasured handcraft. What we didn't prepare for in our nesting is the care that is necessary for all these things and the cost to our spirits in the care. You see, our spirits run with the coyotes. They soar with the turkey vultures. They stand sturdy as the oak. Our spirits crave sun, rain, wind, barefootedness, contact with soil. Our spirits ask at what cost are we accepting comfort? Our spirits tell us, it is too high. Change. Move your legs. Touch the tree bark and smell the scented gray-headed coneflower seeds. Drink in the richness of the sky and the marvel of a functioning ecosystem. Remember. Rejoin. These four walls cannot contain you, but they will if you let them. Get less comfortable. Be more free. Rediscover where you came from. Nourish your spirits. Nourish the fireflies. Nourish the opossums. Nourish the forests. Nourish the wetlands, the rivers, the deserts, the mountains. Nourish the Earth. Find you again. Howl at the moon. Never forget. 

And so we walk and we restore land. We are cognizant that this planet is not ours for the taking, that our spirits require nourishment. The future is bright. Tough choices will be made. The spicy sweetness of the spring blooming Witchhazel envelops us, bringing us home once more.

 

Soundtrack: Jackie Venson, I will Find a Way

Recommended Podcast (and Book): Dacher Keltner, The Thrilling New Science of Awe

Forest Advocacy NEEDED for this beautiful place: 

Finding Freedom

Sometimes things happen and change the way you move about your day and suddenly your life is that much richer, that much more connected and that much more worth living. 

In this moment, I'm not talking about a big health scare or the current polarization of our society or the edginess and fragility that comes with discord. Instead, I am talking about two chairs. Yes, two scavenged chairs Steve picked out of the trash and that we put behind our house. I've showed them in a video here. There is absolutely nothing special about these chairs in their appearance, but in their promotion of lounging, they are novel to us. We come from a clan of workers and that's what we do. Day in. Day out. It's productive. It's often wonderfully mind numbing. It's societally acceptable and lauded. Something about this existence for ourselves though has nagged us for years, hence, the About Us on our website and all our moves and starts and finishes and zigs and zags. 

These chairs, in the late afternoon sun, call to us. We feel the daylight and sunlight waning. We know these days are to be savored, so we sit, we lay back, we watch the sky, we feel the warmth and the breeze, we witness the vultures soaring south for weeks, we see the warblers eating food in the black walnut south of us. Sometimes, we notice a vulture that looks different and we see it's not the common turkey vulture, but rather the black vulture. We pull out our binoculars and we ooh and ahh. Then through those magnified lenses, we see monarchs soaring hundreds of feet above the earth, green darners and chimney swifts too. 

This morning we woke to wet and cloudy skies and saw that overnight blue-headed vireos and house wrens flew down to this little patch of earth to spend the day eating before heading south once more. Those chairs slowed us down this summer and fall. We now wake to trees full of birds and we SEE them. We also hiked. We swam in cold rivers. We hugged big trees. We cried over salamanders and clean water. We saw more caterpillars than we have in our whole lives. We met black bears and copperheads and seed ticks and loved flocks of warblers everywhere we went. We met horseflies on the sweetest little beach at Pickett State Park where we swam after our big hikes. We ran the beach getting away from those horseflies (impossible) and laughed harder than we had in years. 

We felt freedom find us again. Freedom from want. Freedom from longing. Freedom from overthinking. All because of those chairs and a deep desire to live differently. To not let life pass us by. To not get so busy we can't witness the one life that is ours. This desire settled in so long ago, but one distraction after another attracted us and we took a long time to figure out we needed to weigh the trade offs. To say no. To sell campers and choose freedom over comfort. 

Persimmons are calling our name right now and the moment is ripe. It's time to get outdoors and look for these magnificent life giving trees. It's time to eat these creamy, rich, sweet fruits and bask in the autumnal light and feel great gratitude for everything good. 

Our feet are sore from longer hikes than we used to take and we love that our bodies can do this. We can cover big miles in a day and that's part of the slowing: allowing ourselves the time to hike all day long and recognizing, we are strong and powerful and this is our life. This is the life we dreamed. To be outdoors. To feel the movement in our bodies. To have no words to express the love and appreciation we have for forest and old trees and fast moving streams and mountains and marmots and grylloblattids and kind-hearted people. This is the life friends. Anything extraneous, let it go. Find ways to let more of it go. The only thing that really matters is connection - to one another, to the Earth, to good, to love, to humbleness. 

Amongst all the craziness that is happening in this world, we found peace this summer through honing in on our desires for the outdoors, for freedom, for giving back, for LOVE. May you find peace in your own way and may you find it quickly and share it with everyone you meet. Maybe it all just starts with permission to slow down and recognizing that nobleness, worthiness and value do not come from conventional norms accomplished, but rather from realizing that our life is a gift and that the opportunity to see and acknowledge nonhuman life as worthy and essential is the missing piece of human happiness. 

Autumn Sound Tracks:

Nothing to Find - The War on Drugs

Colors - Black Pumas

I Didn't Know a Damn Thing - Amy Ray

By and By - Caamp

Take it With You When you Go - Kathleen Edwards