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

Winter Fireflies, Sunshine and Life on the Farm

And just like that, it's spring. The birds we so recently watched soaring south are soaring north. The maple sap is running or finishing up. Frogs and salamanders moved to the vernal pools in the first warm rains and I hear the frog songs as I type. Winter Fireflies are basking on the warmed south side of trees and we are savoring every last delicious minute of the season of rebirth.

Ellychnia corrusca are pretty fascinating fireflies. You must read about them; they will make your life richer if you know them and it sure makes for a fun end of winter scavenger hunt. So far we've seen them on 10 species of trees at Mohican State Park/Forest: black oak, white oak, pignut hickory, sugar maple, black cherry, red elm, red oak, American beech, tulip tree, Pinus sp.

The raccoons and deer are moving about, I assume, grateful for the retreat of the deep snow that blanketed the Earth for quite some time this winter. We loved watching the fluffy white stuff fall and we loved watching it melt and smell the thawing earth. 

A Gray Catbird spent the winter here up until the day before the last big snow storm when the food ran out. Poor timing isn't it? You know what that means....yep, planting more, more, more!

I'm spending time putting thoughts on paper and then the computer and Steve made me a repurposed table to handle my chaos. I love it. Garage sale legs and an old bulb crate we used for winter produce came together just right. There is so much stuff already in existence, isn't there? A little creativity is all that's needed...

Our little Oreo (aka Wuk) helps me on occasion...

and celebrated with me on my first deer shed. 

Steve and I handled cat chaos with cat gates and now we can breathe again and the oppressed cat (Minnie Pearl) eats and drinks without fear. Can you hear the long exhale? It's been rouuuuggghhhhhh.

Bird houses didn't work well here so we finally threw the towel in and that's also a great, great relief. (Sometimes, we just have to quit fighting a path that isn't changing or improving.) We will continue, as always, to promote snags and natural tree holes.

Woodland sedges are reunited with our little woodland and it made us so happy to have our hands back in the soil, to enrich a beat up fence row and to accept the generosity of these plants to grow.

Thanks to some coordination with a neighbor of ours, the road trash is picked up on our stretch for the time being. This is what Steve and I picked in a couple of hours! Hmmm. 

The dove covey makes us smile every single time. Flighty birds, they are and we get it. They've spent a large portion of this winter here and we are going to miss them when we stop feeding the birds this spring, but we need the birds to disperse for their own health. We also feel conflicted about the bird seed bags (see above). What do you all do with them?

Richard Louv put into words what we feel when we are in the magic of the planet. That's who we are. The rest of it, who knows what that is. That's not our essence and what a gift to know it.

Soundtrack:

MILCK - Quiet

Joseph - White Flag

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