Tension

This is the view south from a ridge line just north of EEC Forest Stewardship. We are not on a power-line cut like this, but they offer views to help us appreciate the greater landscape we reside in. From the tops of my 80 year old Cedars, you can get the view of Mt. Tahoma, cloaked in winter glory with that classic strata volcano form, a hulking hunched pressure valve for plate tectonic action in the north west corner of USA’s lower 48. Washington has 4 of these strata peaks, and Tahoma is called Rainier in Colonial tongue. It’s the nearest to home, but we are far enough away in a “safe direction”

Western Washington is an epic place, that’s why I live here. There’s so much ecology, geology, and topography to explore and learn from. It’s also got a stable freshwater source, temperate climate, and evergreen mega-flora and fauna that’s still present in my backyard. Yet there is also a recent legacy of colonial resource extraction mentality and white entitlement we have yet to talk about as “a great nation”. The high tension power lines stretching out form hydro electric dams that are over a third of the state’s energy production, including both tech and aerospace engineering that props up the hollow shell of lumber and fishing, reduced to timber plantations that now hide our city sewage, and obscene hatchery spending.

To go much deeper on hatcheries and our west-coast salmon populations watch this. Here’s a little snippet-

Part of the tension eluded to in the title of this writing, revolves around power. What a loaded word. The Salmon declines are due in part to damming, for cheap power, irrigation for agriculture, and further residential and commercial development, hand in hand with the military industrial complex. With our use of chemical fertilizers, combustion based technology, and simplified systems of imperial management hierarchy, we remain in decline, along with our fish populations, the wilderness required for human survival, and the spirit in shared living experience.

Screen time runs high, and we think we’re connected and aware of what’s going on, but we’re not. Pinging phones do not actually give us the latest news. That can only be gauged by going outside. Mother nature gives us a play by play of the day, including bird song, vitamin D (a crucial aid to our survival), and a measure of our health compared to the health of the environment we live in. I think a lot of people prefer to ignore this reality, and focus on a never ending news cycle, which carries all the tension a person could ever want. Screens are also giving us something beyond our control, or so it seems, but all you have to do is turn it off, turn off the alerts, turn off the addiction by placing it on a tale and walking away- at least for a few hours. I was at a gathering last night and someone wanted to “share” something with me through my phone. When I told them I had left my phone in the car, they were taken aback. I’m glad I’m not like that. Now, some of us believe we have to be available at all times, and that’s what pagers used to do for us. If you are that kind of person, get a pager and enjoy that tension instead.

Another aspect of tension, especially regionally, are those strata volcanoes. I mentioned Tahoma earlier, and Duvall, the small town I live in, is at the very edge of the known ash plumes and nearby devastation measured from this volcano through geological mapping. The 1980 eruption of Loowit is etched in local memory, and the landscape of southwestern Washington. That mountain is rural, but Tahoma and Kulshan are much closer to heavily populated areas, and deserve our attention, and respect- especially living in their shadows. There are large signs of past eruptions and destruction of both these volcanic peaks. The Osceola Mud flow into The City of Tacoma is a more geologically recent episode of Tahoma’s instability. These volcanoes live on active fault lines, causing quakes on the slopes of these uplifted towers of unstable rock and magma. But geologic time is something hard for humans to grasp, and the generations of people who are born and die between major tectonic and volcanic activity makes these mountains of chaos, more often quiet than not.

The dynamic nature of this landscape makes it regenerative, when given the space and time to do so. This is important to me, psychologically, because I see how much of the old growth forest was cut, and remains absent from this spectacular landscape. I know, because I will not see it in my lifetime, that it takes generations of people to grow a forest back to old growth magnificence. To see trees wider than cars takes lifetimes to grow, and people can barely plan seasonal events, so they don’t think about the slow development of a forest over time. This landscape can rebuild itself over decades, but people can’t wait to buy the next big ticket item, brought to you by a box store direct delivery system of corporate sales based on population consumption addiction. We’re all watching something, checking a screen, looking through it to document limited time on this earth. How many generations back to we have to go to relive the tension in our necks from staring at a screen?

The electrical grid grows tired of our drawing, like the water table in much of the world, depletion continues. Finite resources are going to run out. Technology builds a farcical reality- just update your profile and continue. Log in, blog out- yay this writing, exhale of consumption anxiety. Technology and nature are not compatible in the long term. I sit with this tension daily, checking email, most of my communication, and keeping up with what’s going on outside my little farm and garden bed, what laws will change to make farming harder? What might alleviate some of the strain on our local ecology, to help bring back clean air and water, soil and food for the future. That’s the vision in this life, a calling. There’s an electric mesh fence pulsing just down the hill, keeping sheep in while they graze, preventing them from eating the fruit and nut trees, or native replanting beds around the edges of the pasture. I’m using an electric oven to cook some lamb right now. The sun is catching solar to offset my energy use, but mining those components to make the panels, that was the wrong kind of organic endeavor.

Pick some dandelions and crack an egg. Two bright yellow flavors of restoration progress. Big leaf maple blossoms hang heavy, pluck a few and fry them up in a little animal fat, sheep or dear will do. Crafted livestock and wild hunted abundance from the land. Grazing turns to a protein source main stay. I can sell lambs, but not venison, investing in both sides- domestic and wild, helps keep sustenance abundant. Simple, small solutions for everyday needs remains a focus here at EEC Forest Stewardship. We’re keeping our flock of chickens at 30 or less, and that number might shrink down to 20 in the next few years- mainly because of the cost to organically feed these birds. It’s no longer going to be effective as a money making business to sell eggs to cover grain costs alone. Though eggs are the easiest product to sell from the farm, they are not going to remain affordable as the cost of grain keeps going up. I’ve got a lot of land to supplement the flock during the growing season, but winter feed prices continue to climb. That’s an economic tension I know a lot of us are feeling right now, and it’s a sign of things to come.

Domestic stock may not be possible down the road, at least not for public sale. I can keep a few birds and sheep for myself on the land, without hay and feed inputs, but then I’m not growing food for my community any more. These are some of the most immediate tensions facing the farm, and I’ll continue to mull these challenges over in my mind. The land here keeps getting lusher and more diverse, so fodder remains available for enough animals to feed myself. That might be the future, but I don’t spend too much time looking ahead, beyond a clear vision and intention to keep planting, plucking, and rotating to build fertility and diversity on this small acreage of restoration work.

Where do you find tension in your life? Is it helping or hindering you? How can you adjust to tension? Where is it working in your life like a tide, flowing in and out, increasing and decreasing depending on external factors? At some point, just like the fault lines here, something has to give, and it can be a catastrophic shift, something far beyond your ability to control. Learning to be nimble and flex with change is the best way to address tension in your life. Experiencing tension can be a great part of life, but letting it bind you into a state of constant worry will shorten your life over time. If you are able to engage in movement, walking, hiking, swimming, or even stretching at home, all are worthy ways to keep your body limber, and your mind working on something other than a news story for an hour or so each day, that’s a great tension release. We may not be able to control the weather, or the volcanoes, but we can be prepared, aware, and connected to that natural world that will ultimately compel us, whether we choose to step out of the cave and into the light, or not.