When mourning routine brings a fresh heirloom rose and newly hatched chick to greet the day, something amazing is happening. Growth of lush gardens full of food, medicine, and beauty- with a lot of weeding. Chickens that are healthy, happy, and able to hatch out a fresh batch of young ones for the continued cycle of life. The fresh rain from last night gives the landscape a damp freshness, with tons of slugs prowling the garden. I’m on another gathering mission shortly to pluck them for the chickens. Two buckets stand full of weeds for the sheep, and a rogue ewe stands ready to drop her first lamb into this world. What a full and productive place to live. EEC Forest Stewardship is a lifestyle, with constant projects, fast reaction time in sudden emergencies- like a lamb caught in the fence, or geese slipping out the gate and down the road to a neighbors house on an adventure. There are days when I miss things, like a drowned gosling stuck in a water bucket in the night and becoming hypothermic, or a devastating weed like morning glory getting into the garden through some composted manure from another farm. Those blind spots can cost time, money, and heartbreak. Not everything about this life is cute chicks and a bed of roses. However, the vast majority of days in the field are nurturing and fulfilling, which makes it a priceless opportunity.
Another ewe is being crossed off the flock list, because her first lamb, a ram, has some stubby horn bits on his head, meaning that line has to go, as Katahdins must remain poled- meaning no horns, which makes them much safer to handle. Many sheep and cow breeds are horned, but go through disbudding to remove the horns. These methods use scalding with heat or chemicals to remove the root of the horn to stop future growth. If we can naturally breed out horns to avoid this process, I’m all for it. So this ram lamb and his mom are on the cull list to prevent horns from returning in this breed. That was a 5 minute reflection as I fed the weeds to the flock this morning. I already had the rose in hand, so taking a moment to smell the deep perfume of this blushing beauty helped steady the genetic consequence. There is so much complexity in working with the living world, so much I never see or understand, so much more I want to know, experience, and repeat. That’s the gift of this lifestyle, a daily ritual of opening my eyes to new plants, animal behavior, and a slow awakening to the more subtle changes over nearly a decade and a half of being with place, rooting in for a lifetime if I can.
This is a snapshot of recovery in progress, right by the creek, there is a buffer of ground protected from cutting in the 1970s, when EPA standards came into effect and America agreed leaving some protected space next to wild water would help prevent pollution and erosion in our vital freshwater streams, rivers, and creeks. In Washington State, salmon protection helped strengthen the buffers to a whole 25′ on both sides from the center of a small creek’s bed. I’m sure there was good science backing this measurement to include the fluctuation of water’s flow from season to season, as well as nature’s tenancy to move a stream’s bed over time, waxing and waning the topography with flooding and erosion events, which dictate a stream’s path, unless we canal and cement a wild water’s pathway to accommodate human expansion.
Luckily, this creek did not suffer such fate, but it was dammed, rerouted, culverted, and largely forgotten until the 1990s, when a local man dug up his ancestral family homestead maps and saw the creek labeled and designated as having salmon in it. I wonder how many tribes would have oral histories on that creek, and many others lost in colonial expansion and domination of the landscape for extraction gain. The entire property, and hundreds of miles in all directions was timber land, clearcut and hauled by mules, oxen, and later rail to the ship yards and rail lines owned by many of the same people directing timber harvests and mining. The hills and ridglies of The Snoqualmie Valley, and thousands of other valleys all over this earth, have been clear cut, burned, railroaded, and paved to give us access to more resources for the rich at the great cost to the land, and human health long term.
Replanting the forest, extending stream buffers to over 100′, replanting that with native plants, both trees and crucial understory, this is the slow road to recovery for our lands and the health of all life on earth, not just people. In caring for place, rooting in, being more connected directly to the rain coming down right now, giving me a window to write and reflect, knowing it will stop again in a while and I’ll be back outside weeding and wondering at the living world that I am a part of. There is still a railroad cut through this land, a shadow of the iron horses and desperate immigrants looking for a way to survive in The New World. The Snoqualmie people will not be in these historical photos, they did not put the rail in, or cut the trees- though their future generations, caught up in the extraction culture of colonial abuse, have become tree cutters. This capitalistic genocide still holds them today on token land grants, a legacy of original people who have lived here in these woods, by these rivers, with the salmon, elk, and cedar tree; these people are still holding a history of living in harmony with the earth, not raping her for petty cash. It is rape- in the sense of taking needlessly by force, with violent acts, again and again.
These subtle walls of green are returning, through all the pillage and waste that came for over one hundred years to this place, now reforming, reshaping the story from blight to light. Ferns, snowberry, salmonberry, tailing blackberry, and the cedar, hemlock, and fir trees sheltering them from above are witnessing the return of salmon, the sounds of elk bugling nearby, and hear the creek flowing once more, skipping over rocks and bubbling down from the spring fed hillside to the great Snoqualmie River below. This is the poetic journey I’ve woven into in this blink of consciousness on earth, one heart beating in time with the opening of a rose, or the peeping cry of a new chick hatching forth. When I can ground in those sounds, there is healing. When I can hold the harvest in hand and smile, this is the good life, may we all find our way back to planting and watching ourselves take root once more.
EEC Forest Stewardship 