EEC Forest Stewardship

Yes, a surprise two day trip to visit family and I’m back in the air again- biggest carbon footprint I can make. I try to make the most out of these moments, so I grabbed a window seat and looked down. I knew it was going to be wild scenes in Puget Sound, freshwater outflow from flooding rivers carried sediment deltas far out into the ocean waters. The tides push back, but it’s fascinating to see just how much soil is going into the ocean from 50 miles inland or more. There’s also human and animal sewage, vegetation, dead animals, trash, polluted runoff from roads, and much more. I’m sure the coloration of these plums says something about their makeup, either way, it’s dumping into harbors and clogging waterways. Nature continues her rebellion against our abuse, and it’s easy to see the bigger picture form a few thousand feet up.

There’s a fresh snow on The Olympic Mountains, and also on The Cascades, near where I live. This snow pack is crucial to survive the summer drought, but the snow is late, and even the ski industry is getting hit this year as mountains remain closed into December. Hopefully this first snow stays, and gets added to often throughout the next few months of Winter. When we don’t get enough snow, the river valleys shrivel to nothing, and it does not really matter how much flooding happens now, all that water flushes away into the salty sound, and ocean beyond. In some places, like EEC Forest Stewardship, we retain the water, slowing it with earthwork swales, then sinking it into the soil, letting the plants drink deeply, storing the water. If we designed all the ground like this, we could keep water on the land where it falls, banking it into the ground to help maintain a strong water-table below.

Water has been a huge influence on sculpting this landscape as glaciers ground the geology into pebbles and ice age floods scoured the land. Drumlins are easy to spot from a plane, and I took full advantage of flying over them with enough visibility to snap a photo or two. Since I was headed to The Southwest, we flew down into the Oregon end of Glacial Lake Missoula Flooding. Looking closely, I can pick out the river bottom ripple effect of the massive waters cutting across the landscape. These dynamic changes are nearly impossible to fully comprehend, as we’ve never seen water of such volume in recorded history. The First Nations of the area do have oral histories that tracked glacial retreats and migration up and down the coast and inland valleys in their canoes and on foot further east in the high desert, thousands of years before Spanish conquistadors brought horses.

In early December, 2025, atmospheric rivers flooded The Cascade Mountains for weeks, and the lowland valleys below. This flooding was no where near what the melting ice sheets delivered in a single major flooding event, but Western Washington got a glimpse at how water takes over a place, filling space and blanketing vast areas with sudden change. Thankfully, EEC was not in any flood danger, but witnessing some of the chaos from the air as I flew south, gave a lasting impression.

As my flight continued, passing over Western America from 40,000 feet above, I was able to witness other climate fueled changes going on across the landscape. Over Utah, The nearly dried up Great Salt Lake is caught in a polluted disaster as winds whip up the dry lake bed where countless toxic sediments await a chance to fly. When this happens, air quality plummets, and being without filtration masks or an h-vac environment will cost local residence their health and well-being. I knew my flight path would take us very near Salt Lake City, Utah. As we crossed over this vivid landscape, I began to see the dust clouds rising between the vapor clouds at low altitude. At first I thought they were wildfires, but no flames appeared below. The wind was carrying up the dust and spreading the heavy metals and corrosive chemicals left in the lake bottom after two centuries of industrial abuse and environmental neglect.

Perhaps we think, in our short lifetimes, that these catastrophic environmental collapses will not bother us directly. It’s already costing us, from insurances of all kinds, to the environmental pollution that causes so much of the health problems we face at younger and younger ages- effects not easily measured by science, due to the expansive variables involved. Half the population in The USA suffers from poor air quality. You may be living in what you think is a pristine environment, but the legacy of industrial greed and corporate extraction haunt not only the air we breath, but also the water we drink, and the food we eat- all of which remains exposed to our own polluting habits. Flying on an airplane is not helping, as I said earlier, it’s one of the worst impact I can make as an individual at this time on Earth. Where have we gone so far off the rails? In one word- population.

Let’s take a trip back in time, to a place in The Southwest of America where prehistoric humans thrived in a different climate, one that today may present as high desert, but was once a lush savanna with thriving populations of grazing animals and clean environmental quality. Tsankawi is a magical place I’ve written about before. As a avid outdoor enthusiast, I am draw to places where early peoples lived and thrived when the environment was conducive to such habitation. The site is an entire small mesa complex that would have had a flowing stream on the south side with canyon walls to drive herds towards easy to hunt bottle necks along the waterway. 360 views from the top of the pueblo secure the area from all direction against raiding and ambush. The stone age people who first established residency in the cliff caves would have thrived in a time of more rain, better vegetation growth, and many more animals to hunt. They would have been dabbling in early agriculture, as well as hunting and gathering throughout the region.

Life would have been mush more challenging over ten-thousand years ago, but it would have also been short and sweet. I can only imagine that during a lifetime in this stone age village, a person would have deep connection to place, the plants and animals that sustained them, and strong connection and belonging in the community to survive. How can we rekindle this connection in our own lives today? Can you cultivate anything in soil where you are? What is the source of your drinking water? Where does your food come from? Do you have a larder for emergency? What kind of birds sing near your home through the different seasons? These are only a few questions out of many we can all be asking ourselves to reconnect with the natural world, and better see our relationship to it. We may thin more about a grocery list than setting a trap for a rabbit or foraging for wild grains, but the sources of our food still come from land worked by other people to keep us fed, and those crops can and will be directly impacted by our actions day to day.

The people who established the cliff dwellings at Tsankawi eventually abandoned the area by the 16th century, about the time there was a sever drought across most of The Southwest. The exact reason for human depopulation throughout the region is still unclear, but unrest was the outcome, through many of the surrounding First Nations today claim the stone age people of Tsankawi as ancestors. The high desert now well established in New Mexico does not lend its self to massive populations, but in prehistoric times there were many more natural limitations to massive growth, from infrastructure to the variable climate and unstable early agricultural. Too many people in an area depleted wildlife through hunting and trapping, until a lack of food would force displacement. When resources became scarcer, raiding would increase, making permanent settlement vulnerable to attack. The larger a settlement, the larger the demand on the natural world, which, when left unchecked, depletes everything until famine and starvation take hold. Ecological collapse often plays a role in toppling civilization, and without food sovereignty, all populations are susceptible to this looming threat.

The United States has an unbelievable arsenal with weapons of mass destruction for all. Just a few miles from this site, the birth place of atomic weapons continues its quest to stay ahead in the arms race. The current indigenous nations of the area remain on reservations (pueblos), through they continue to quest for their access to sacred sites and the resources needed to remain connected to the land through hunting and gathering, as well as agriculture. They also have strong spiritual ties to this place, where ritual and traditions are still practiced. I am so grateful to know these people are still present and active in the area, and continue to voice their concerns about colonial treatment of the earth and the impact of military occupation today. Reflecting on our personal lineages and how we directly or indirectly benefit from the removal of indigenous people from their traditional homelands over the past few centuries. My ancestors came from Europe on boats through Savannah Georgia and moved west from the 1700s through the 1900s, ending up in Oklahoma, where many First Nations were sent as eastern states filled up with European immigrants after initial colonization of The East Coast.

Right now I am sitting on stolen Snoqualmie Tribal lands that were carved up by timber barons in the late 1800s, along with railroad tycoons looking to cut a way through the big trees to ports along The West Coast. Legacies do matter, and our ability to name our ties to them, to see how we live in the wake of them today can be a powerful and ongoing lesson. It’s a chance to reflect, take in, and respond. My response is to stand in these sacred places to learn from the statements being erected by the original people, who are still here and willing to speak to us, to ask us to listen. They are slowly putting up their own boundaries, offering insight, and reminding visitors that the land is still part of their heritage. When I summited the cliff and stepped to the edge of what was a later pueblo structure, there was a new sign up with a clear message to go no further. Though in past visits, there were walking paths into the central plaza, now a clear direction to keep out reminded me that people are not always respectful guests.

I’ll remind us that National Parks, like Bandolier, were never discussed with the local indigenous people that once lived there. Whole villages were often removed from the wild places we call park today. Though parks do preserve important wilderness, the people that lived in deep connection with those places, were part of the wildness in them, have been taken away to offer an illusion of pristine wilderness we like to think of as untouched. Some states are working to change this assumption by teaming up with local tribes to change public understanding of parks and why they disenfranchise many indigenous people who once inhabited what are now National Parks. Tsankawi remains part of The National Park system, and visitors pay a fee to be there, but local Pueblo People also come to practice traditional ways in the area, and remain connected to their ancestral place. Where are your ancestral places?

The petroglyphs are yet another reminder that ancient people lived here and were deeply connected and reliant on place for shelter, food, water, family, and community. We can all relate to these needs in our lives today, but most of us will never carve sacred symbols into the wall where we live in reverence to the space that holds us. When did you last make some lasting rock art to communicate? When did any of us last sleep in a cave? I took the opportunity to sit in one at the site, looking out across the landscape while imagining what it would be like to tend a fire there, cook some venison, and talk with friends and neighbors late into the night, sharing stories of long journeys successful hunts, and celestial navigation. When was the last time you slept under a blanket of stars? This place truly inspires me, and helps craft some personal dreams to reconnect, share, and spend more time outside with others. Though I came to the monument alone, I met others on the trail who stopped to talk and reflect on the experience in this magical place. We stood in awe, appreciating the beauty and human presence literally carved out of petrified pumice. Below is a footpath up the cliff side that has been worn down over centuries of use. There are many paths like this along the way in this loop trail, and the feeling of following those footsteps drops me right into prehistoric life thousands of years ago.

I’d flown a few thousand miles to be here, and celebrated another incredible trip to one of my favorite prehistoric sites on earth. The opportunity to be in a high desert terrain full of early human settlement and a legacy of connection to the sacred rejuvenated my own vision to place connection back in Washington. I chose to live where I am because of the abundance- water, temperate rainforest, ocean, mountains, rivers, lakes, and high desert on the other side of The Cascades if I want to dry out and find the sun again. What privilege! We can all be grateful to access- public parks, public lands, public education. Let’s try to spend more time in public, being present with place and those who share it with us.

As the flood waters receded, I returned to The Puget Sound and found it raining again. I love water, and am thankful for all its gifts, even when it seems like we’ve had too much of it. The sacred floods are a part of this land’s great history, along with massive ice sheets, monumental great floods we can’t comprehend, and a lot more to come. From strata volcanoes to some of the most active fault lines on earth, Western Washington is a heck of a place to call home, and I’m grateful for it every day, and the opportunity to share these adventures with you dear reader- thank you for your time and interest.

The fungi are blooming at EEC Forest Stewardship as the rains settle in and temperatures drop. These sulfur tufts or Hypholoma are common on stumps and logs in temperate climates. This particular fruiting is happening on a log that was inoculated with shiitake spores many years ago. I noted that several of these old inoculated logs were covered in Hypholoma this Fall, 2025.

Gymnopilus or Pholiota?

Sometimes the coolest looking shrooms pop up out of the logs around here and I really have a lot of learning to do. Mushrooming is a hobby for me, so I try to keep the quest fun by allowing my self to acknowledge that sometimes, I just don’t know what kind of mushroom I’m meeting. The bristly looking red mushroom above was giving me a little trouble. At first I thought it was a Jack-o-lantern, but then it had that texture on the cap, so I dug a little deeper into species and found several other leads. By now, I figured the only way to really know was spore prints and a microscope, so I took a step back and continue my wonder. I used to do a lot more spore analysis, but have put the hobby part of this adventure front and center, thus allowing some limitations in this field of knowing. Mushroom knowledge is changing every day as we do more DNA gene sequencing and spend more time in the field getting specimens to study- and that’s the job of mycologists. Yay science!

When I’m walking around in the landscape at EEC Forest Stewardship, I do try to capture images of fruiting mushrooms for a land journal of species I keep for personal record, but getting the exact ID on each bloom I encounter is not the object of my observations, just seeing them their and recording presence can be enough. This brown mushroom could be easily missed in the first photo far left, but it’s size caught my eye, and the unique ring of texture around the cap.

The stipe was too tall and thin for a russula, and that ribbed pattern around the cap was fascinating. Also- the color of this mushroom seemed to change with the light- as you can see, the shot from more directly above shows a more yellow/brown cap, where the shot from the side, far right, is almost mahogany. Still, as I looked on at the stipe (stem) of the mushroom, I kept getting Agaricus vibes. Later at home, as I began crafting this blog and sitting down with my computer, I began my typical online search using PNW Pictorial Key for Mushrooms. It’s worth sitting down with this guide when you have a chance. I’ve found most of the species I’m looking for when I really take the time. It took me scrolling through each gilled mushroom family until I got to Amanitaceae. This is a large branch of the mushroom community, which includes A. Vaginatae, known for having “grisettes”, that patterning on the edge of the cap. That name also refers to a cheap gray wool fabric, in 17th century France, that was worn by working class women. I then went on a journey through the life of a Grisette, and thank the mushroom world for this history lesson. Check out Madam du Barry to find out more.

So, mushrooms of EEC Forest Stewardship- I love tangents! I’ll also not soon forget grisette, or this pattern on a mushroom. This could be an edible type of fungus, but because it can also resemble toxic varieties, I leave it alone. Remember- a brave mushroomer is a dead one This is an old adage I deeply appreciate, and repeat often. This healthy fear of what could also be is important when deciding to harvest and eat a mushroom, and I would advise against it, unless you are with a mycologist who can confirm with absolute certainty. Know that the kind of certainty you might want could involve a microscope and some sharp eyes, not easy testing in the field. Pictures are your best bet for ID, but even I often fail to get all the angles needed to confirm physical traits- in this case, no picture of the underside of the cap for gill confirmation. The details of physical characteristics in the attachment of gill to stem matters.

This is another direct reference from the PNW Pictorial Key. Please picture all sides of a mushroom for better identification, and even through I don’t do many spore prints now, I recommend trying it a few times to get a little dirt time in knowing how. Note the last mushroom example above- the false chantrelle. As noted, the true chantrelle is not gilled. Veined mushrooms are easy to spot once you know the difference, until you find toothed fungus, jellies, slime molds, puffballs, and a list of diverse shaped, consistencies, and colors that boggles the mind. They grow in almost any conditions, but are most prolific in woodlands, where carbon dense branches and logs need help decomposing back into the soil to promote rich growth and abundance in vegetation, cultivating rich habitat for all life. Mycology is the system of redistribution of resources through a network of root like structures binding soil and plant in a superhighway of nutrient corridors for consumption and production we humans have a hard time fully understanding, but could appreciate if we sat with our living surroundings more. Wake up!

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Polypores are crucial wood decomposers in an ever growing temperate rainforest. Most of the elder trees have been cut, especially in the landscape that includes EEC. The Weyerhaeuser Company, a European Colonial Legacy of extraction industry, built, literally, on the timber feet of old growth canopy that had not been present in Europe since Roman Occupation. A legacy of ecological genocide continues today throughout The Americas, but mushrooms never stop trying, following their own original instructions to help transform through decomposition. On an old growth stump, lasting reminder of the tremendous forest that once stood, this Sitka Spruce elder hosts a bracket fungus of some kind. It could be a red belted conk. Age is making the ID of this fungus among us difficult, but it’s a legacy of decomposition vital to forest health. In an old growth temperate rainforest, their are countless kinds of mushrooms, which reflects the complexity of mature forests. We humans cannot recreate these systems with all our fancy tech and scientific studies- through we are starting to get an inkling of all the layers involved.

For monoculture tree plantations, fungal invasion is a constant battle. Some mushrooms do kill trees, but usually only when a tree is already compromised in some way. When I read about laminated root rot taking out whole forest groves, I wonder why there is surprise at this when all the trees have the same genetic makeup. That same GMO technology can also develop resistant strains, but with monoculture, there is always a lack of genetic diversity for future health in a forest. As long as we continue to choose profit and industrial production, we’re hurting our ecological survival as a species. Don’t be fooled by green wash, your product placement ads often have promises of planting trees (in a plantation where they will be cut), or “sustainably harvested” (after the rainforest was cut and cleared to plant the palm oil trees). In short, if it’s mass produced, it’s hurting out environment; from food to clothing, furniture, and electronics, everything made today for our addictive consumer culture huts us by destroying the very environment we rely on to survive as a species. Please don’t buy in!

Mycology can help us see the rebound in the environment, and tell us what’s out of balance too. Mushrooms are actively trying to decompose all kinds of matter in the environment, from toxic fuel spills to harmful pathogens, mycology is on the job 24/7 to keep the soil healthy, as well as send vital nutrients across the environment to aid plants in need. These often overlooked, and certainly underappreciated fungal friends are important players in the health of global ecology, so next time you see a mushroom, say hello, and take some time to get to know the fungus among us doing it’s job to clean up and enhance habitat for all.

EEC Forest Stewardship restores land damaged by colonial farming legacy, clearing the land for production. This practice has a dramatic cost that is still overlooked as we continue to clear and develop for profit across the earth. Leafhopper Farm uses livestock to reintroduce animal numbers that would have been thriving on this landscape before European hunting and trapping for market consumption, along with apocalyptic habitat removal eradicated most flora and fauna in less than one hundred years. As a white, European colonial descendant- aka, my ancestors came to this continent from Europe starting in the 1700s through to the 1800s through indentured servitude, tenant farming, sharecropping, railroads, and military service. All these opportunists were spurred by land grabs from Natives, tycoon greed, dehumanization of First Nation Peoples, over-consumption of finite resources, religious despotism, and hubris of the worst kind.

Our Nation is still living off the stepping stones of our ancestral legacy built on the backs of others- mostly folks brought in as slaves, servants, and laborers. Numbers of poor grow, while wealth consolidates into the hands of a few. What does this have to do with food? I know, I like to go down the “hard to sit with” presence we find ourselves living in, but it’s crucial to understanding how we can make affective change in our own lives to shift away from the present trends and habits that have brought so much destruction to the very environment we can’t live without. The sheep, chickens, and geese play important roles filling in some of the missing pieces on the landscape to restore the fertility to the land. Without returning our landscapes to what they once were- or at least moving back in that direction, we’ll be more deeply impacted by exponential change happening in our environment, due to careless handling by those who came before.

The best thing we can do is consume less. At EEC, the livestock eats mostly off the land where they roam daily. In winter, the sheep go into the barn for lambing and to let the wet soils remain intact. Hooves on muddy slopes cause erosion. If the old growth rainforest was still present, along with the apex predators like wolves, elk herds would be pushed around the foothills, moving them up into the foothills, and back down across the floodplains, as they do in Yellowstone today. There are natural balances we humans care little about in our day to day lives. We embraced the artificial, because of modern convenience, but it’s not making us better beings on this planet. We don’t need religious guilt to keep us regulated on some moral high ground, we need mother nature to give us a slap in the face so we wake up. She’s doing that, with weather, which will fundamentally shift, along with our ocean currents, icecaps melting, sea-level rise, and all the extreme meteorology that comes with it.

Yes, you’ve heard all this before, I’m sure, but have you shifted any of your own habits to affirm this truth? Any less online purchasing? Any less screen time? What about consuming food in season? Would that help? Yes– a lot. At EEC, the seasons dictate what we have in stock, what we’re preserving for later, and when our bodies need these different nutrients throughout the year. There are also economic reasons eating seasonally is best. We just fall out of these good habits because of all the convenient bad ones. They are bad- bad for our health, bad for our environment, and ultimately, contributing to our collective destruction. Since we’re all so overwhelmed by life now, it seems not to matter. We’re all just trying to get by. No, we’re conditioned, and it’s not going to stop unless we put down our screens and get outside.

If you’re looking for a little inspiration, especially with The Holidays of Winter well in play, take an historical journey with Ruth Goodman into Tudor culinary arts. Not all our ancestors ate was pottage- but a lot of it was- especially the majority of the population, which was poor. Perhaps a little time thinking about simple food and why it’s still a winner today for health and ease of making. Especially in Winter, when, here at the farm, I’m pulling stock out of the freezer, or from a glass jar where the flavor and nutrition have been sealed away for several months. We’re far from the caliber of peak freshness, but still fed by delight of taste. Roasts and stew grace the table, along with bottled fruit wine, pies, and jams offer sweetness through the cold, wet, dark months. I’m picking some green lettuce and borage from the garden, but when the next heavy frost comes, root veggies become a staple. This year, I’ll be harvesting some sunchokes for the table.

For the feasting days, I’m plucking four geese for the larder. If our wild waterfowl were not devastated by bird flu and habitat loss, I’d be able to hunt them too, but better to raise my own birds now, and a few older hens and young roosters are going to the freezer soon. It’s past the main slaughter season, but I’ve still got a few animals to pluck for a bountiful fresh harvest through the winter. Our Western Washington mild winters afford a little more flexibility in harvest- from animals to vegetables. I even harvested chantrelles in early December, and hope to grab a few more in this week of warm deluge we’re expecting. Our plentiful waters also carry a bounty of aquatic life that’s harvestable year round. From shellfish and seaweeds on the coast, to trout and perch inland, the fresh eating continues. Restoring our salmon stream at EEC is a key give back to habitat, with our wildlife corridor, native replanting of forest and understory, and water quality protection with agricultural setbacks well beyond minimum requirements in an active CREP program to help restore priceless salmon habitat.

The vision is tightly woven together, with more pattern and material to come. Adding more layers makes for a stronger basket, and our environment needs as much as it can get. Is there a way to consolidate your own habits to better accommodate the natural world in some way? “Reduce, reuse, recycle” was something I grew up hearing, and my Mom knows “mend and make due” form her Mother. My Grandmother grew up during The Dust Bowl in Oklahoma, and experienced rationing during World War Two. These mindsets are missing today, and most of us don’t choose to remember past struggles. Our history shapes who we are and what we do now. I’ve watched modern industrial agriculture with chemical companies after WWII poison the land, water, and people of this country, and the world, and I want that to stop. My idealism led to cultivating food without chemicals, though a small amount by comparison to what’s needed to support consumer addiction today. I still go to the store on a monthly basis, and I buy out of season sometimes, but I’ve found that by learning what it in season, I am less likely to look for what’s out. If you could stop buy tomatoes in winter, that would be a huge first step. Here’s a site with some helpful swap suggestions.

Endemic food plants in our region is another key way to get the best food and support native plants in making a comeback. At EEC, we’re planting cultivated adaptable fruit tree varieties that can make way for native species over time. Our back field grove of chestnuts will shelter the future oak and evergreen forest plantings that will allow us to step back, returning the habitat to native forest in time. I’ll be spending the rest of my life learning about the native plants of this region, how to grow them, what amazing gifts they offer in food, medicine, and materials as I adapt my life to what’s growing around me. For those of you living in more developed cities and apartments, you can make your home a habitat for houseplants of all kinds- including tropical exotics. Use your environment to your advantage. Here’s another great- though extreme inspiration for sustainable urban living. If you have time to watch a streaming service, you can take a few minutes to explore fresh ideas to change old consumer habits that do more harm than good.

As we head towards the end of another year, take some time to reflect on what you’re buying power means to the world around you. Since we’re living in a cash economy, what can you do to save more by reducing your purchasing, reusing what you have, and perhaps, recognizing something you’ve been buying out of habit, rather than need. I’ve recently caught myself reaching for packaged hard-wear instead of the loose stuff in the bins at the hardware store. By taking just a few extra seconds to pluck each individual eye hook, instead of buying all that extra packaging, helps me reduce plastic in the world. It also encourages the store to keep stocking loose items instead of embracing more packaging. I’m also going to the store- and hitting many stops in one go when I shop. It ends up being far less driving than the delivery trucks that are now coming through the neighborhoods several times a day to get those packages to your door same day. Online ordering is not good for our planet.

Back at the farm, we invested in a large solar bank for energy consumption, and continue to let nature take her course in our production of food. We share our bounty with friends and neighbors, and sell enough to pay for any extra inputs- like alfalfa and scratch and peck for the hens. The future of this landscape is looking lush and abundant, with systems to save water, sunshine, and fertility for the future generations of all life on earth. How can you make a difference today? What buy power can you flex to help support restoration in your life and your local community? Small steps count, like sharing a ride, planning less trips out in your car, or canceling some of your online orders. Reach for local, learn what’s growing nearby, take a walk in your local park, and look up at the sky. Slow change is OK, mother nature takes millions of years in adaptation to hone her own systems, we only have this finite life to make ours, but it’s still an impact that will be felt for centuries to come.

Satellite mapping is incredible. It’s been a great way for me to visually grasp landscapes, ecosystems, and terrains on a level only recently possible to modern humans. I’ve always looked out the window on flights- when lucky enough to get the seating, and have a strong familiarity with central plains farmland, as pictured above. The 160 acre squares are common in Oklahoma, and many other states where land allotments were granted in the late 1800s–early 1900s. Why 160 acres? The National Park System can answer that-

Homestead claims were made based on the rectangular survey system, which is still used in the United States today. This system surveys and organizes land based on the 640-acre section, also known as one square mile. The 160 acre homestead comprised one quarter-section of a square mile. When Congress passed the Homestead Act in 1862, the technology of the day was still primitive enough that 160 acres was thought to be the maximum amount of land a family could realistically farm. As time went by and more settlers came searching for land to claim, homesteaders had to go further west to find plots still available. This forced them to go to areas where the climate made farming much more difficult and 160 acres was not enough for a viable homestead. As a result, Congress passed several additional homestead laws allowing claimants in certain parts of the country to acquire more than 160 acres.

Even the property of EEC Forest Stewardship is marked out on the title and legal description based on the surveyed quadrant. All land in The United States is labeled this way, so we’re already grided out, even in The National Parks. I think there is a pristine fantasy in our minds about the wilds of America, most of which are pictured in The West of the country. Yes, the west is wilder than the east in The USA, but that’s more topographic than anything else. Just look at west vs. east from satellite:

It may still be hard for you to see this, but there is an extremely different terrain and ecology on each side of our continent. Yes, our county spans a continent, which is not normal for most countries, we have a heck of a land mass we’re working with, which felt to settlers like an endless plane after they came over the Appalachian Mountains by the millions post Revolutionary War. England had not allowed it’s colonies to expand further west, understanding that Tribal People owned what was on the other side, but then General Washington promised troops 100 acres of Indian land as payment for service in the war- let’s not forget all the land already claimed by colonial powers was taken in the first place, so why not expand and have the rest? Manifest destiny right? Wrong! Manifest Pest is more like it. Oklahoma was homesteaded after it served as reservation lots for tribal people pushed out of the east and starved into submission. Tribes had been pushed out so many times by then, America thought nothing of taking what was left and squaring it out for settlement, because there was so much space, why not?

Even back in New England, the land was carved time and time again to suit development. In New York State, where once Patroons ruled 16 mile stretches of river, yeoman farmers plowed up 60, 80, and 100 acre parcels for family farming. These more elongated grids are still visible from above.

Then in that post revolution era, the 160 acre homestead lot took shape, and in The Ohio River Valley, a wave of colonial gridlock appeared- nearly overnight.

Down in Southeaster America, the pine lands were a little more hilly and wet, but carving apart the landscape is still clearly evident, our scabs netted across the earth, cutting apart the natural environment to fuel expansion and abuse of our finite resources that has proven madness.

During The Dust Bowl, more waves of humanity fled their own undoing in my home state, to the sugar bowl in California, Oregon and Washington. The Sunshine State is grided out in a very familiar pattern, and we’re back to bottom land agricultural dominance. This time woven in with fracking industry, which also dots the landscape of oil rich portions of our nation.

Those undeveloped flanks of The Central Valley are craggy desert hillsides, not suitable for grazing or planting. But these grids somewhat pale in comparison to the checkerboard system embraced by northern California, Oregon, and Washington States.

By then, the railroads were connecting the coasts with transportation to ship all the wonderful, endless natural resources out of the inland and into the pockets of investors, a few already wealthy white men, who took this whole continent, including Canada and Mexico- not to mention Central and South America, into complete exploitation for personal greed. That’s so vast, I know you’re still trying to figure out this pattern, but it’s as plain at a cleared checkered board- consumption.

Washington likes to call it’s self The Evergreen State, but the pimples are showing through. We blight our forests with continual cutting, monoculture replanting, and the application of both “treated” biosolids (human shit), and chemicals like herbicides and pesticides to keep the trees growing up while the native flora and fauna are killed off in mass genocide. When a Native Person once pointed out to me that their people have been surviving apocalypses since White Men first came to these shores, the message starts to ring true.

I’m still trying to help us see the vastness of colonial and colonial legacy settlement in America. Below is a satellite photo of south-central Washington State. It’s an area comparable to Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island combined. You can still easily see all the clear cutting pockmarks across the landscape, and don’t think the green areas are pristine woodlands- they are monoculture plantations with no wilderness left for most of the mega fauna that once roamed in the millions throughout this landscape. White settlers came and cut it, burned it, lay track, bulldozed, fenced, and mined the skin of this earth in a similar way men abuse woman to this day. I’m calling it out, that’s for sure. Drill baby drill? Grab em’ by the Pussy? Anyone?

This legacy of consumption, conspicuous consumption, is written across our landscape, and EEC Forest Stewardship folds right in. The dairy farms of The Snoqualmie Valley, the logging camps, railroad, removal of First Nation People- it’s all here in much the same way it is on The East Coast, and that visual scar of gridded insanity lives on in the shape of all our square homes, square rooms, square screens, and square boxes we eagerly await at our doors. Just in time for the holidays!

P.S.

The day after completing this writing, NPR had a story about actual gridlock and how traffic is at a record high, leading to more commuting hours in our lives. I’ve experienced this personally living in King County, even at the furthest reaches of its boarders. Duvall is a bedroom community for workers in and around Seattle, including Bellevue and Redmond, the cities built by Microsoft. The tech industry put Seattle on the map, along with timber and mining. We’re about 45 min from the city by car with no traffic, but because of the congestion that continues to build, it can be a commute of 2-3 hours. Yes, there is an effort to expand more public transit, like light rail and ride share vehicles, the fact that there are too many of us continues it’s shockingly absent stint in our collective consciousness. When do we say “enough!”? When do we draw our own boundaries around consumerism? When do we stop? Then I ask, “What can I produce?”. Rather than always assuming another generation is the most important thing for each of us to produce, we’re getting the memo that many of us just should not breed, and instead, grow ourselves in other gifts to help the generations to come- and not just humans. What if the old adage, “for my family, for the future generations, and for those to come” actually embraced all the future life on earth, not just one species? Perhaps gauging to that measurement would help with solving most of our current social, economic, and psychological challenges today.

Cascade Katahdins graze on a dry day at EEC Forest Stewardship. Even in the total cloud cover, our new photovoltaic system is catching rays and banking green energy for our endeavors. It’s late November, and our flock is starting to show signs of pregnancy, just as winter sets in. There is still fodder to graze in these pastures, though fruit has fallen, and leaves too. Blackberry is still leafed out, and the sheep brows those hedges and edges for extra protein. Alfalfa will carry them to term, and nurse new lambs by next year. It’s good to see this condition in the ewes as they start to put most of their energy into growing the next generation for Leafhopper Farm.

Our LGD Kangals hold up security 24/7. I sleep soundly at night, knowing my team of alert K9s watches and listens intently, and vocalizes a stark warning to wildlife, which has learned the through routs out of the way of our well fenced livestock boundaries. The creek offers over 200′ of open throughway with restoration plantings of native species, creating habitat and a through way for wildlife moving from The Snoqualmie Valley and River, up into the Puget Lowlands and Cascade Foothills. These transitional zones allow access through human development, with intention to re-wild and retreat from over time. Eventually, our back field will be completely replanted with native understory, and the deciduous nut trees will have reached mature canopy to shelter future forests to come. Slowly, the human tending will become more and more passive, with some harvesting and replanting to fill in ecological gaps caused by human initiated extraction and removal of resident people, and biomass.

What I notice the most in this landscape is the missing top soil. There is a good compost layer around these barns from decades of domestic stock, but soil takes hundreds of thousands of years to build up and create real growing conditions for ancient vegetation. Glaciers cut through much of this area in the past tens of thousands of years, so the topsoil was relatively young, by geologic standards, but for First Nations, the land had become fertile and abundant with all the animals roaming the land, quick seeding and germination of plants as shallow glacial lakes turned into marshes and river systems carved out of melting ice and alluvial buildup. The landscape that hosts EEC Forest Stewardship, resides on a slope just below an area that started as a glacial lake and then filled in over time to become a wetland with spring fed overflow into what is now called Weiss Creek.

In the 1950s, the next generation of dairy farmers in and around The Snoqualmie Valley ventured further up hill from the already claimed bottom land to seek out new homesteads to raise their own cattle. My neighbors The Boards, and the previous, and original owners of the property I bought both came from Oklahoma in the 30s to work in the dairy barns until they had enough money to start their own herds or buy a plot to settle on. The Board’s yellow cow barn still stands, empty of cows for almost 20 years, and certainly not a milking barn past EPA regulations in the 1970s. When I first moved up to the farm, I bought two calves from Mr. Board to fill my freezers and host work parties. We had cookouts, grill fests, set some good fencing, planted trees, built new dwellings and habitat for birds and beasts, and feasted of a neighbor’s beef. What a foundation!

The flocks are fabulous, through a little monochrome. I’m not in it for a look, really, but there are some breed standards to follow, for health and harmony. I select for temperament and build, health and natural foraging behavior. You’ll see the chickens working the land, gleaning bugs, looking for opportunity across the rich earth. Sometimes this looks like a raid into my garden, which is not ideal, but it helps me design better plantings to dissuade the flock from my crops. The problem is the solution- I will continue to stand by that motto. The geese harvest is about to start, with gander on the menu for winter feasting rituals. I’ll look forward to dining on the rich drippings with dressing and fruit compote. The pears that remain chilled are softening up to make flavorful pies and fillings for seasonal baking. Oh, what a larder to celebrate! This is what such a lifestyle can offer with a little seasonal production, time in the dirt, tending, and harvest to storage for just the right time. Fruit wines are being bottled, and the hens finish molting, slow their laying cycle, and rest up through the long nights.

It was 50F in late November 2025 when I went to do night check- a ritual of final water and feeding, eyes on the animals to make sure they are OK, and good nights. I let Gill free to roam, his leg is holding with older and wiser lifestyle changes. Gill is showing his age, and we’ll monitor his comfort and health through this colder wet season to make sure his quality of life remains stellar. Koban is alert and observant, testing- as a good Kangal does while learning, but responsive to my commands, at least for now. I’m expecting the 2 y/o fall apart after I get all his manners programed. I say programed because these primitive dogs have most of their knowledge through instinct that is over 5,000 years in the making. Right now, Koban and Gill are loose with the ewes at night. There have been no problems, but I know this is a short term learning window. When the lambs drop, Koban will not be loose with the sheep, or able to reach the young ones for the next year. He will have a lot of supervised loose time with the lambs, but never alone. I see what he sneaks with Valley sometimes, nipping her and knocking her down- she is a smart bitch, and knows to stay down and still when he hassles her, but I’m there to intervene. I do not leave Val alone with Koban.

Keeping a watchful eye on things is necessary for the system to run well. I just got back from a 10 day trip back east, and need to watch what’s happening upon my return. I see a young rooster starting to via for pecking order, he should be culled. His red eye is another cull trait- as they tend to be more aggressive and become egg breakers over time (this is my observation with my own flock- experiences may differ). The beautiful plumage of this bird will be saved for craft and tool making- including flies for top water fishing. Black iridescent feathers are valued in decorative feather fashion. If you are interested, contact me. The flock continues to develop its own characteristics, and I plan to introduce some more fresh genetics in the coming years to keep health a priority. Line breeding can be done well, but not for too long before certain unwanted traits establish. The red comb and waddle is not ideal, but remains a dominate gene in chickens, and so, without more Ayam Cemani genetics, we’ll eventually have all red comb birds.

With one breeding pair of Cotton Patch Geese, there is less worry about genetics, but no plan of forming a flock out of two at this time. I continue to learn about these birds, what they need, and what it would look like to establish a breeding flock to support this well adaptive heritage animal. It’s traits are favorable, from shy temperament to relatively quiet self, unlike most geese breeds. This bird is smaller, but takes little grain to keep plump. They muck up the water, but put down great fertilizer for the grounds. They are smart, clean, and keep away from the other animals, mindfully moving about the landscape and staying out of trouble. I like them, but am not yet embracing a flock plan. The mess is a little trouble with more than two. I would put the offspring into a rotational grazing pen for the warm months, letting the mature pair roam free. That will involve some added work, but would then maintain a more hygienic habitat for all the geese, and a targeted grazing path for birds to work more diligently for the farmer. I love having a mobile bird system along hedge edges in the warm months to keep back the root sappers and weeds. It’s also an easily fenced off area for reseeding after the birds are concentrated along the strip. More to come on that project in future.

Growing a mix of plants in layers for livestock and human use, as well as restoring native plant varieties that should be present in this ecosystem, the landscape slowly returns to full abundance. The edge spaces, like this rock retaining wall around a parking area direct runoff towards the pond and off the gravel drive, and hold the slope for a setting hedge of mixed use shrubs like mock orange pollination species, hard hack material and pollinator, Saskatoon, thimble berry, cypress, willow, Nootka rose, and more. I hope to establish several more understory varieties like bear berry, trailing blackberry, and black cap raspberry. The chickens are in this shrubbery all year round. The sheep brows through from time to time, gleaning their own vetches and broad leaf forage. Layering creates wonderful abundance, and layering the animal systems adds to returning complex ecological cooperation that best supports long term survival and diversity in a thriving temperate rainforest environment.

No matter how many forbs and hay grasses established here, there will not be enough elk and deer, grouse and band tailed pidgin to produce the restoration power that can undo human logging, railroad track laying, damming, and generally depredation of the natural world to fill pockets far from ground zero in this land abuse, cloaked in limited connection to place, as in, none. Trappers had moves through these forests and lake shores for a few hundred years before the logging corporations came for the timber. Most industry had already devoured the entire East Coast reserves, Upper Midwest hardwoods, and Rocky Mountain pines. Timber barons wanted spruce and fir for construction across America. By the early 1900s, small logging towns like Duvall sprung up, and railroads took milk to pasteurization on its way into Seattle, Tacoma, and Olympia. Further south in Washington State, mining of coal had sped up development of the North Pacific corner of an established western most part of The United States.

So here, at the end of a long stretch from Europe to North America, through the generations of colonization and settlement, homesteading and surviving across time and space, this final generation of such a legacy is striving to return nature to place, living in some reverence of connection, sharing this experience and setting the table to share sustenance and abundant fruits from one woman’s labor, and her team work with sheep, chickens, geese, dogs, cats, bugs, mushrooms, people, and restoration farming on small scale, manageable scale for one or a few people, this place thrives and re-wilds in a mimic of what could be again in future, helping to restore and regenerate in this great space and time.

The rams are in their own enclosure and settling down for a quiet winter retreat. They enjoy hay and the blackberry stand within their enclosure. The pair is getting on without too much drama. Okie certainly makes his dominance known during their feeding, but there is plenty of space and fodder for both. I’ll look forward to seeing how our home bred ram lamb Quinn out of Lickity-Split and Okie matures. Keeping a second ram for a few seasons to line breed some genetic is not unusual, but will demand keeping two herds through the breeding season next year. We’ll see how that goes. I’m hoping to pair him with unbred ewes early next spring while Okie waits for Fall rut and his mature ewes. I can always plan like this when Winter is setting in, but next Spring, lambing will determine a lot of what the warm season produces. These are not even planted seeds yet, just plans in my herd book notes.

Livestock continue to play a major role in restoration farming here at EEC Forest Stewardship, and our eggs and lamb continue to feed local friends and neighbors, passing on the abundance here at Leafhopper Farm. Gratitude to all the patience the animals show me, and their importance work to till soil, enrich pasture, and turn vegetation into rich clean protein. May the manure and browsing act as some replacement for elk and deer that once roamed these lands by the millions. May the flocks mimic the millions of birds that once flew over these hills, thriving in The Snoqualmie Valley below during migration. These modest domesticated livestock system pales in comparison, but the fertility is returning with each year of smart rotation and responsible husbandry. Perhaps in another few hundred years, elk, geese, and even wolves might have a place back in this dynamic landscape.

This early 1700s map gives us an idea of colonial vision in North America. The 13 Colonies are almost fully formed, with New England’s Boston, Cap Cod, Rhode Island, Long Island, and New Jersey mapped, though New York City is not marked, the colony of New York was present, along with The Iroquois Nation, with Philadelphia, Cherokee, and New Orleans marking more important landscapes of ownership in the European cartographers who showed their people The New World. It was, by now, a settled coast of immense proportion. New Mexico, Louisiana, Florida, and California were all country sizes in Europe, and areas only explored by conquistadors and priests, fur traders and mountaineers for the last hundred years. Rivers guided most early commercial ventures into the content’s interior, with tribes tolerating the new comers for their steel and textiles. Trading brought biological exchanges too, and the great First Nations suddenly took sick from the interactions; millions died. This sudden human removal form the landscape gave the impression that the land was empty, ready for new people to come and steward, to grow families and multiply in the abundance of free land- available for the willing.

Crowded conditions and feudal subservience remained abundant back in Europe. Most people were landless, working as cheap labor for wealth and power. The elite entrepreneurs quickly grasped that a new land of untold riches await settlement and submission across The Atlantic, and hurried ships of treasure seekers across to claim sovereignty. Slavery in the tropical islands of The Caribbean brought sugar, rum, tobacco, and other valued crops up from a year round growing environment and free slave labor from a dark continent just below the colonial European psychopaths. I use this label to assure my readers that the powers claiming land have and will always be mentally unstable, in that they shit where they sleep and just climb up on the backs of others who wallow in their filth. Extracting the earth’s finite resources simply for planned wealth gluttony kills us all. How do we move away from this ravaging? Day to day door to door delivery would be a major first.

But back to the colonists- yes, religious freedom, yes to vast land ready for settlement, yes to needing able bodies to build infrastructure and harvest the resources. No to free land, it was still owned by companies, titled white men, and countries. That’s all kinda the same person really, with a lot of bureaucratic go betweens. I love siting patroons up The Hudson River. Investors in The Dutch West Indies Co. could have 16 miles on one side, or 8 miles on each side of the great river, who’s mouth emptied at one of the deepest harbors on The East Coast. This is why New York is such a thriving business city even today. First Nation’s people were happy to make accommodations for the white traders, at least sometimes, but there was tension as more and more pale faces poured into the landscape. Tribes made successions after several battles and prolonged harassment from white colonist. The situation was white men taking land from people they saw as less than for not already squandering the natural world for profit. Ordained by some guy in the sky BS doubled down on the ethical questions, and settlement went on without a hitch in moral quandary.

What remained unknown on the map above is where I reside today- so the colonial settlement went all the way manifest destiny and here we are- descendants of people trying to make a better life for themselves at the cost of whatever, we pray and that makes it all ok. No, we have to reach around and take the hand of those behind us. What does that mean? Look back to start, think about who is standing there and why. If you are confused by my words, I’d recommend looking deeper into your family tree, some of those branches that first made the puddle jump and why. Come on! The DNA tests are fun, and you’ll be in a database that’s accessible to the FBI, CIA, and more. I should tell you the government got into our health records with that DOGE thing. The CDC is run by KGB, I mean RFK? Ok, enough said. Unknown remains to be seen. Washington State was not even a glimmer on the horizon, well, it was mapped as a place yet to go, so we went there. My ancestors came in at Savannah in Georgia, walked west through Alabama, Missouri, then Kansas and Oklahoma. Other’s made it from Red Hook NY to Arkansas. All were tenants in one form or another, so they could not stay put very long, the landscape was changing fast.

The US purchased Louisiana from The French in 1803. At that time, the area known as Washington today was not yet explored. Oklahoma had not been carved out as a state, but it was fixing to be the dumping ground for unwanted First Nation People still residing along The Eastern Seaboard. All the promises given to tribes during the struggles for independence in the 1700s went out the door as more and more Europeans came to seek a better life and free land for the taking. By the late 1800s, abusive corporate interests used the courts to steal what was left of tribal heritage and tradition still established in Colonial America. After The Revolutionary War, veterans were promised 100 acres of Indian land, including the west side of The Appalachian Mountains, which had been the final refuge of tribes pushed out from the colonial states. The North West Territory was firming up new state boundaries like Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. Tribes had to be relocated out of these new lands of settlement, so good old Andrew Jackson told his federal agents to remove all Indians to Oklahoma Territory, onto reservations where they could be civilized and consumed into European white man culture as a subservient. There were no equal rights being offered at that time. White slave owners were greedy, and took what was left of tribal lands in the southeast without hesitation. The trail of tears carried many more black slaves of tribal people into the central heartland of America to continue their labors under duress until 1866, nearly 3 years after The Emancipation Proclamation.

The 1860s was a time of many changes on the colonial maps of North America. Washington separated from The Oregon Territory, which was a whites only settlement-the legacy of which still clings to the state to this day, though Portlandia skewed that understanding a bit, ushering in a lot of trendy folk thinking Portland would be so cool, only to find out drugs are real and a lot of unemployed young people becomes a real problem. But you can always get a job in the lumber mill. Logging was in full swing in these areas of The Pacific Northwest in the 1800s, and America was forming her county liberties through railroad expansion and mining industry dividends. White people from Europe were still pouring in on The East Coast, and many inland families sent their children west, to find even more opportunity in the open lands of a post civil war third wave of dominion want. Cattlemen had begun taming the wild west, with beef to feed a growing East Coast full of cities ripe with enough extraction wealth now industrializing in cities were people wanted to eat out and be entertained. Sound familiar? It’s still the way our culture works, and we the people buy in frequently- at the cost of so many unknowns.

There was a Civil War (1861-65) in this decade, so the secession map below might make more sense in this context. Good old Washington Territory, and my home state of Oklahoma was hosting all those savage Indians. Slavery was a really big thing for the south- and the north really, because all the textile mills up north were supplied by the salve labor picking and baling cotton in the south. Triangle trade benefited the abolitionist states as much as the antebellum ones- and Europe filled it’s coffers with the profits of slavery through indirect purchase of slave made goods and materials, so don’t think anyone’s ancestors weren’t heavily tangled in this grisly treatment of our fellow human beings. That stench still hangs heavily in white guilt, but we have to see what we’re made from, and accept, before we can give condolences. This is the combing of the snakes out of our hair folks. I’ll point you to The Tree of Peace story from our Haudenosaunee teachers- the ones that told Benjamin Franklin that consensus was necessary for confederacy to stand.

After The Civil War, industry consolidated, and a lot of folks kept moving westward. Those North West Territory states formed, and Chicago Illinois became the happening midpoint of American prosperity. Middle America happened to be a breadbasket and pasture for some of our best commodity crops and cattle companies- to this day. All that came from kicking First Nation People off the land, tilling up millions of rich bottom land soil, and clearing wildlife like wolves, bison, and billions of birds from the sky. That’s right folks, commercial harvesting of wild animals was on an unchecked apocalyptic massacre of many species. Note the use of punt guns for bird harvesting. The passenger pigeon went extinct in a hunting frenzy, which saw the last bird killed around 1900. Washington had been a state for 11 years, but Oklahoma still had a long way to go. There had been a land rush in 1889, opening up a lot of what was Indian Reservation to white settlers in need of some good free soil to tend. Homesteads went up all over, and the last Native Peoples were consolidated together on small allotments, quickly snatched up as tribal numbers dwindled into State Run Boarding Schools. You should research this tragedy of American History to better understand what happened to so many First Nations People, what they had and did survive. That is held in living memory today. By 1907, Oklahoma was admitted to The United States and cattleman happily drove their beef along The Chisholm Trail from Texas to Kansas and beyond on railroads to the major Cities now cropping up in well established Union States.

While Chicago dined on red meat cattle from The Great Plains, the replacement species after the bison were eradicated to take away tribal food resources and force them onto reservations for government issued food rations, trains were connecting from The West Coast to aid in the transport of much needed goods like coal for power and timber for building. Now fully colonized, America was an open door for settlement from all sides. Up in Washington State, The Treaty of Point Elliott (1855 had been signed, allowing The City of Seattle to be established, but eventually, white settlers pushed further and further into the interiors of The Pacific Coast, claiming new townships in the seasonal village spaces of tribal people. The cities and townships full of white people still exist today, with little understanding or care of what was here before, or what could be with a little more understanding of unknowns. Ignorance is bliss, I understand how so many of us continue to rest in the comfort of our unknowns. How else could we sleep at night? How many of us don’t? What can you do to get better sleep if you are starting to think more about our troubled past? What would it look like to seek the unknown?

Find out if you can drink the water out of the nearest stream to your home, or well, or even a shallow dug hole in your backyard, or a bucket collecting rain water. Find out what’s in that water, and why you would be advised not to drink it, just start there. Then find the nearest soil to your home and see what’s growing in it- or not. How many domestic dogs pee and poop on it? How many vehicles, admitting air born chemical poisons that do compound over time, drive by each day and cover that soil with pollutants? What kind of air filtration do you have in your home? Climate control? Sealed windows and doors? Is your home carpeted? Dry walled? Painted? What kind of chemicals are off-gassing in the place you spend most of your time? How about the place your children go? Spooky yet? Sure thing, because we’re living in a world of petroleum products, bid to worship screen time and buying addiction. I see the trucks driving around, coming to all the neighborhoods, and we’re still going to the store, driving every day, spending way too much time on screens, even to answer communication related to work and family, instead of being face to face.

When was your last contact with the outside world? Even in New York City, I found quiet places to sit, watch, reflect. Without your phone, you do look around, so put it away for a little bit, leave it inside and go out. Make plans with others, in person. Meet new people at a community space, hear an opinion that differs from yours. This is rewilding 101. It does not take too much effort, just a change in priorities for a few days, then weeks, then you’ll find others doing the same and connect. We’ve lost a lot of community, or only share space with an echo of ourselves in thought and belief. Stagnation causes putrification, which is unhealthy. When we open our eyes to the natural world, include ourselves in it, and encourage others to join us there, the mind, body, and spirit have a healthy reconnect to what sustains us. If you are having trouble finding this connection, change needs to happen in your life. The air, water, and soil are all necessary for human survival. Our other major need- energy, has taken over, disrupting the balance of our other resources to suit its own leviathan. People now flock to money as a savior, worshiping wealth in coin, rather than celebrating the wealth of ecological diversity around us that was The Garden of Eden, borrowing from my own cultural cannon.

Reaching back almost 400 years into the start of global colonial ambition, we can chart the deviation of humanity from our place as graspable cultures, into global maniacs of industrial consumption, and where it brings us today. Through exploitation, fortunes were amassed, money that came through the direct taking of our natural resources, at the cost of many millions of people already living in harmony with the earth, understanding her limitations for the sake of all people really need to survive and thrive in our short existence. Ask what your ambition in the world is today, and hope that it remains within the finite abundance of our world. This is the vision we could all walk towards in making a better planet for the future generations. I would like to see our humanity carry on through the evolution of this planet, but the way we are headed now, that does not seem likely. May the living earth continue to teach us with every breath that we are here in this moment. May her abundance continue to thrive, to ensure our human survival, and the survival of all living things to sustain life on this great earth, which we all share. May scarcity, the fear bringer, be overcome by our love and compassion. Sounding a little too hippy for you? Well, mind your direction of wander and ask what you believe in.

If you continue consumer addiction, take a seat on the crazy train and we’re all in together none the less. I’m typing on a high consumption ticket item, and sit in front of this screen about 3-4 hours a day. That’s about even with my continued outside time, unless I’m on an outing, in which case I’ve driven almost an hour each way. That’s some consumption for ya. Plastic truck parts, computer parts, any tech really, containers, safety equipment, paint, acrylic, most of the things you spend your time holding- steering wheels, phone, even a pen if you still write something. Plastics make it possible, and we’re all full of them anyway, so hip hip hooray on that one folks. Tin foil hats aside, we really are drowning in the petroleum we’ve been worshiping for the past 100 years. In less time then that, we’ve put poison in all the wells, our atmosphere, and the brain barrier. By now some of you are AI searching my words- or should be. I’m not linking in this writing, not today, because it’s been repeated time and time again through these pages. Now, go read the labels on all your detergents and get the heck off industrial chemicals. Biodegradable soap is the first change to make a huge difference in our world. Love!

Anywhere you go- there’s a mushroom close by! I’ve just come back from a trip to The East Coast in late November, 2025. There was amazing autumn color still on the trees, and some mycological bursts of bright pigment as well. This Chicken of The Woods was a wonderful example, hardened by time and age, an old one like this is shellaced, not a choice edible, but still some sustenance steeped for a while if you’re in need. It was loose in the ground, protruding from the rotted out oak stump where a city tree used to grow, near a school. Ideally, something would be planted here to replace this fungal habitat, but for now, the mushrooms continue working to transform detritus into valuable soil. If we sit with just this complex system of nutrient exchange, even fathoming for a moment, the layers of evolution involved, out simple understanding of it, not even yet aware of the possibility. Gosh those leaves are so pretty.

When I turn it over, this saprtrophic mushroom presents a glimpse of the happenings on a mycological level and beyond. This species needs rotting wood to thrive, though its mycelia can travel through and colonize rotting leaves from the same tree- usually an oak, and there are a lot around here- note Quercus montana leaf top left. This specimen is established in the almost gone stump of something, in a planter square between a paved parking lot, sidewalk, and a heavily used blacktop street. You can find mushrooms anywhere, and here, between a boys and girls club and a Moldavian church in West Springfield, an edible mushroom came forth, matured, released more spores, and continues to support mycelia in the soil.

So many of the species on The East Coast are a little strange to me, but I keep my eyes peeled and focus on what a dominate hardwood forest offers. Strolling through a different forest near The Catskills in New York, I could not help but notice all the blooming fruits of fall. You might think of apples and pears, but I was not in an orchard- well, not a recently cultivated one, I did notice many other saprotrophic examples slowly taking apart dead wood in a recovering forest. This particular forest was a Dutch homestead with an established cherry grove. The cultivated trees are long gone, but native black cherries are making a slow comeback. They need light, and are often found in edge spaces. Because this forest has no younger established evergreens, the cherry has continued into the canopy, with the potential to become an old growth tree. Nearby Turkey Tails passively break down a legacy of nutrients for the soil and vegetation that feeds all life on this earth.

The log hosting this larger specimen, Trametes pubescens, is a bracket fungus enjoying a downed feast that will last many years. There’s a little calling card on this log, which crosses the small stream through a purposely canal drained wetland. The Dutch knew how to make wetlands go away to reveal wonderful topsoil for tilling. Row crops fed families and made abundance for selling in the local community, or keeping livestock, which most families did in the early 1800s. By the 1900s, dairies had consolidated in the bigger river valleys, and pasteurization put commercial milk on trains to go to the big cities like New York. The territorial marking of this turd might come from a fox, most likely vulpus vulpus. The animal is leaving a flag to say “there is a good crossing here”, a direct path above the deeply cut drain ditch that is now eroding away at a rapid rate, pulling in logs that will actually help restore this wetland, in time.

The family that came and dug this drainage came on the heels of a much larger shipping canal built in the early 1800s. It’s historic banks are stones throw, or easy cart ride down the hill, where this famiyl could sell their products, like the cherries, to a canal boat pulled by mules, heading to The Hudson River, a shipping highway before rail, and later trucks haul the world to and from major ports at it’s mouth down in the bay. Coal was streaming out of Pennsylvania along this canal, and all the little town stops along the way bought coal and traded agricultural goods. The Dumond family that lived here in the 1800s worked to make the land as productive as possible in their short tenure. However, they left a depleted landscape with lost wetlands and terrible erosion that is still cutting away the soil today. As trees naturally fall into the path of these active waters, the flow will slow and spill over into the awaiting wetlands. Eventually, the water will return to its old floodplain, but human intervention could speed up this recovery, with debris dams set in strategic areas to help guide the water out of the canal and back into the low lying areas of this forest.

We have dominion over the land, yet know so little about it. The primitive concept of dig, build, control, vs. a more enlightened observe, learn, reflect, fold in brings short term gain at long term greater loss. Humans have the ability to reason out common sense tactics for survival in almost any situation, yet we keep slipping back into reactionary extraction. Untangling ourselves from that economic nightmare now holding so much of the world in the hands of a few mega conglomerates will deteriorate as this wetland did, but the compelling topography of finite holding it all up is crashing. Exponential weather extremes deal catastrophic blows sending our living world back into balance, and like 99% of all life up until now, we shall go extinct. Until that time, we can work towards restoration and rewilding, weaving the natural world back into daily routines and rituals. I’ll take a page from these mushrooms and keep on transforming personal passion into a thriving life in this abundant world.

Connectivity is the key to this thriving, and our own actions can branch out similarly, locally, with people we see doing good work that feeds everyone. None of the leaves hold back on the tree year round, refuse to compost into rich soil, that feeds the mother tree, who grows new leaves every year, knowing they will drop again in The Fall. Someone wrote a poem about this endless giving, as a metaphor for mankind to take and hold close. The mycelium is another teacher, one you have to look closely to see, but she too is ever giving, weaving death back into life, transporting inactive matter to active neighborhoods of complex mineral, vegetable, and animal relationships that make all life possible, please fold yourself right in.

Canopy is very important to the soil in this part of the landscape, abundant in hard wood trees. In big prairie country, the grasslands put down 20′ deep root systems that have similar exchanges of minerals to build better soil, hosting all manner of biological factories under the surface. Grasslands to have a more complex underground system of biodiversity and microbial action, but the forests have an above ground diversity that is just as important. Looking up in to the canopy of this hardwood landscape, I can see trees that have died, and are now hosting all kinds of life, including important nesting habitat for birds in standing snags. These dead wood towers are very important to the environment, and should be left alone if they are not a danger to personal property or a heavily used throughway. Eventually, mycilia will also inhabit these dead standing complexes, helping to deconstruct the wood and returning it to the soil.

As humans, we think we know so much about woods, soil, and water, but nature is so complex, layered, and reliant on community activity to thrive. When people take away one part of these systems, it has a cascading effect on the whole process. We took out the old growth forest, causing huge erosion of the precious topsoil in every forest we cut. Then we killed off all the predator animals, thus removing a keystone part of the life and death cycle in the animal world. Our livestock borough disease, that killed much of the deer and all the elk, as well as the over hunting we did to sell fur, meat, and antler to industrial processing. Not to mention our own sickness brought from Europe to The First Nation People, who died by the millions before the Dutch settlers and colonial expansion began. Not much of this history is taught today, but you can learn a lot by listening to the oral histories still spoken by the descendants of the tribes, that still live in these landscapes throughout America.

Nature is always trying to restore balance, and the mycological friends in these forests show the strength and determination of the natural world. The smaller relics of recovery are just as important as the big flashy conservation tree planting and wetland restoration, and it’s done passively by millions of unseen organisms still alive all around us. I say passively because we don’t have to pay to implant them, work to reestablish the mushrooms, or guide them in what they should do. Nature runs independently of us humans, and that’s incredible to sit with and watch. The more time you can spend sitting and watching, wandering and exploring, the closer to the natural world you become. In fact, we the people are part of the earth’s living system, we’ve just strayed from our original instructions to steward and tend. If you can make time each day to tend, even just observing what grows on around you, you are taking steps towards re-connection and restoration in your self. Once you rediscover the wildness within, you can embrace nature as a part of, rather than separate from your mother earth.

The wilderness of New England still carries many scars of human disruption- from canals to clearcuts, the land is deeply changed by all our extraction and greed, brought on by a complete disconnect from the living world. We spent so much time thinking about what we could change, we didn’t stop to think if we should. Now, the consequences are coming home to roost, and the human species faces monumental survival challenges related to the exponential change nature is now adapting towards, with or without us. Looking down at the rotting logs around me, I stop to thank nature for continuing it’s evolution, regardless of our monkey minds and ideas pushing in. We cannot sway nature too far off course. Learning to see her adaptability and change, embracing it and learning to be with nature, rather than against it, this is the best evolutionary understanding we have. Fresh air to breath cannot be artificially contrived- not in a sustainable way, fresh water cannot be synthesized- H2O is just that, and no lab can conjure it out of thin air. Safe soil to grow out food is not made en mass online. You cannot scroll through different soil options and pick what you like for your home. Terra firma is what it is, and though we learn to amend and cultivate, our tilling abuse and monoculture nightmares are still actively destroying the priceless landscape for the sake of industrial madness. Yet the mushrooms continue, trees grow and die, wind pushed over shallow roots in the diminished topsoil, and water carries off the nutrients needed to stabilize the banks and return the land to wetland recovery. What can we do to work with nature, to re-wild ourselves back into our roles as stewards and co-workers of mother nature?

The Oak Curtain Crust pictured above is a fascinating species of mushroom I had not noticed before. It was a beautiful sunny day to capture some pictures of this beautiful bloom. Almost always found on fallen oak logs, the strain originates in tropical regions, and has found it’s way up into New York’s hard wood forests over time. Think of all the wood we’ve shipped all over the world, and you’ll better understand how fungus has traveled to all parts of the world- for better and worse. Many fungal strains caused irrevocable damage to our native forests. In much the same way small pox wiped out native populations of people, fungal strains entered the hardwood forests of New England and wiped out keystone species like our beloved American Chestnut. On the West Coast where I live now, The Western White Pine is gone from our canopy too. Mushrooms are certainly important to forest health, but non-native varieties make short work of the trees when they are not resilient. Over time, American Chestnuts are being genetically modified to resist the blight, but very few native trees remain alive today to carry on resistance. A GMO Western White Pine strain has also been created, and I’m planting them on my land in hopes of helping a crucial tree return, but to what end? Forests adapt naturally, even with chaotic loss, new forms of forest evolve. It’s that human cause that we keep ignoring. Then we come up with our own solutions, manipulating genetics and guessing at what might work. Again, when we stop to think about what we’ve done, maybe we can start by stopping some of the destructive madness of our own actions, and being to accept the consequences. I reflect back to that wonderful speech by Dr. Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park, we did not stop to think, we rarely do. Take a page from the mushrooms and sit with it for a bit longer. Imagine the outcome of careful thought and gentle reflection. We could reshape our world in the image of nature, rather than grasping at technology as a savior from what could be our own garden of eden.

Whenever I travel back to New England to visit family and friends, it’s like going to another country. The United States is a young nation on the world stage, but certainly well colonized by the Europeans that flocked here for a chance to start a new life, or in many cases, exploit the natural resources that were already devastated back in Europe. The history is deep- for colonial history, and though the first nation Abenaki had been living in the area for thousands of years, they had been hit with the early viruses that swept through The Americas when the Spanish first arrived a few hundred years before. That’s why the landscape along The Eastern Seaboard seemed empty when European colonists arrived. Millions of people had already died, leaving some of the best village sites available. The European ships found deep natural harbors, anchored, and came ashore to settle The New World without a clue as to who was already living there. Plymouth is on the south shore of Massachusetts, “At the Great Hill”, which is the meaning of the state’s namesake, also a tribe of First Nation people living in and around what is Boston today. The North Shore, where Rowley was founded in 1639, was the home of the Naumkeag people. They were marsh folks, enjoying the abundance of tidal mud flats, oak islands full of turkey, deer, geese, and ducks, as well as endless seafood from the shore and Atlantic Ocean beyond. They called the area “fishing place” or “eel-land”. Names that speak to the important food resources of the area and why they were settled by the tribes.

Today, Rowley, and the surrounding area where my family lives, is known as The Great Marsh. Most of the land around our home is protected conservation land, open to the public, allowing access to the tide flats for shellfish harvesting, kayaking, and walking trails to enjoy the splendor of this wild place. During some high tides, much of this area is flooded by brackish water, covering the causeways that we drive to get in and out from our dwelling. These access roads are ancient, with petrified wood below the rock and gravel used to maintain the county road today. In the 1600-1700s, the area was drained by tenacious farmers who wanted to cut and harvest the marsh grasses to feed livestock and thatch buildings. You can still look at aerial views of the landscape here to see the drainage canals and ditches cut through the marsh to keep the land dry enough to drive carts onto, though draft horses wore wooden mud shoes to keep them from sinking in the mud.

When the tides are up, like after the full moon on my recent visit, we try to time our entrance and exit from the marsh to avoid flooding. Still, an adventure through the tides as they change can happen, and that’s why my parent’s drive cars with high clearance. In rare cases, the tides are too deep for any vehicle, thus you have to wait out the flooding on whatever side you’re caught on. Luckily, tides are predictable, so we’re rarely stuck. Watching the water slowly cover the fields, mudflats, and causeway is a meditation of sorts. The water pours over the landscape slowly, but within half an hour, the grass is gone, and a glass mirror of liquid reflects sky. What a magical moment, ending as quickly as it started as the tide changes, and the waters head back out to sea. Our home sits at the edge of this transition zone, and, though my step-father did stay on the land during The 1991 Perfect Storm, he was not concerned, even when the waves were breaking ten feet from the door. Our little island in the marsh is over twelve feet above sea level, with another barrier island further out, sheltering us from the full force of Atlantic storms.

I’ve never been strongly connected to Ocean or shore spaces, but our family home in Rowley is a beautiful place to visit and take in. Sitting in the living-room watching the tides go in and out is a fun past time in our home. With a book in my lap, I read, pausing occasionally to take in the changing landscape around me. In an afternoon, the view will go from golden fields of slat hay to an inland sea, pushing rack up onto the edges of raised oak islands, the trees a testament to enough shore for sustained roots down into the thick marine clay. In the next 50 years, this whole area will succumb to rising sea levels, but for today, the house is safe, and our little island in the marsh remains a haven for family and friends. Below is the view from my reading perch, looking out when the tide is out, and when it’s in and flooding.

These tidal islands are full of mystery, and exploring them can be a challenge, because they are covered in poison ivy, ticks, biting flies, and sink holes out on the mud flats. You can be walking along on the grassy plane, then suddenly fall into a cut through the marsh from draining, which was covered by the long grass that tends to fold over after the floods. It’s such a mysterious place, Lovecraft wrote a short story about the area, using the marsh as a menacing presence over the small fictional town of Innsmouth. Haunting tails abound, and indeed, one of the unfortunate women who was hanged as a witch in famous Salem, came from Rowley, and the marsh. Margaret Scott had married a struggling marsh farmer, who later died, leaving her destitute with her brood of starving children. She would stand out on Rout 1, the first highway and toll road in America, begging passers by for alms and charity. If they refused her, she would curse at them, which was later used against her as testimony to her wickedness as a servant of the devil. Hang her for the inconvenience of being poor and having hungry mouths to feed.

The Great Marsh is no place to be caught on foot in bad weather, and if you don’t pay attention to the tides, you might find yourself marooned on one of the little oak islands for hours. Wading in can be very dangerous, with rip currents pulling you out to sea, thick mud to hold you fast in the flats, and sharp shellfish cutting at your shoes and legs as you trudge through the pungent sulfur smelling sludge. I’ve explored these muddy expanses with and without chest waders, and many do ford the marsh to harvest some of the best clams, oysters, and mussels available. Because the marsh is protected, it’s waters remain healthy, with little agricultural runoff, and no industrial waste to jeopardize the health of the place. There is a local oyster-man who has established rafts of cultivated shellfish for commercial sale. We are excited to support his venture, as shellfish filter and clean the marshes, making the landscape healthier for wildlife and people. The marsh is an important flyway for many birds on migration, and wildlife refuges are established throughout the marsh to protect vulnerable species. There is still some well regulated hunting, but only archery for deer and turkey. The Marsh has some of the best black duck hunting in the state, and, with permission, our family lets hunters come through on the weekends during the season. Dogs are required to fetch the birds out of the muddy flats.

Pictured above is the high tide mark from the back porch of the house. The water is quite close, but no surf crashes, just a slow seep of tidal flats soaking up to the edges of the rack, where phragmites reeds mark the edge of brackish flow. The mature hardwood trees also signal the edge of freshwater growth, and I did not notice any major losses due to rising ocean levels- yet. As I said before, inevitably, this are will one day be uninhabitable, but for now, it’s a spectacular place to visit and enjoy. I recommend The Rough Meadows if you do plan a visit, this Audubon stewarded trail system offers clearly marked routs through the marsh to keep you safe. The area is full of marsh views, oak forest expanse, and wonderful birding. Just make sure to check for ticks when you are done- and don’t stray from the paths unless you want to encounter some poison ivy- trust me, I learned the hard way more than once!

So much gratitude to The Chandler Family for making The Great Marsh accessible to the public, protecting the habitat, and seeing a clear vision of conservation and public use hand in hand. Acknowledgment of the original people who lived and tended this place- and their legacy, which continues today. Let us not forget that the First Nation People continue to live and thrive around us, and we, as guests in their homelands, can offer respect, support, and space to listen and learn about the places we now also call home. Thank you to the marsh, it’s beauty, lessons of change, and rewilding. It will always be a special place to come home to.