Posted on

8. The Darkness

Early Winter

December 22 to February 1

Darkness begins with the longest night of the year, celebrated as Yule, St. Lucia, Shab-e Yalda, Shalako, Toji,  or Dongzhi, not to mention the adoption of the season by early Christians.  Someone built Stonehenge to mark sunset on this beginning of the longest night. The Darkness ends with the first signs of life, sometime around Brigid’s Day, also called Imbolc or Candlemas.  The Lunar New Year is near.

All summer warmth has left the ground, and clear days freeze the earth.  The cyclonic storm cycles continue to roll in.  Snow covers the foothills and mountains.  As day-length increases life waits.

Wild Creatures and Wildcraft

The salmon runs are finished, and eggs gestate in gravel and cobble.  Their greatest threat is from floods that can scour the nests.  Gestation is driven by temperature.

With a blanket of snow on the ground, the high country opens up to back-country skiers, snowmobiles, and snow shoes.  Rabbits and chipmunks skip across the snow in sunny weather, moving  among warrens and seed caches.  Bears sleep.

Timber is traditionally harvested in winter when the sap is down, drying is slow, and the fungi are asleep.  Controlling the rate of drying produces sound wood without checking.

REVegetation

The planting continues, as long as the ground remains unfrozen.  With the delivery of bare root stock and cuttings at the end of Frost, large projects start to go into the ground.  Work stops when the ground freezes, unless there is deep mulch for insulation.

 deep insulating mulch.  Rubber suits and broad hats are still in fashion.  Insulated gloves give comfort to fingers that can stay cold, even when the body is warm from work.

As the increase in day length accelerates, some enthusiastic shrubs start to break their buds.  Elderberry and indian plum are often the first.  A clear warning: get everything in the ground.

THE Garden

Eliot Coleman calls darkness this the “Persephone season”, when the daughter of spring has been dragged into the underworld and nothing grows.  Even if you can keep the soil from freezing, there is no light.  This is the starvation time, before any spring shoots.  A hard freeze can turn roots to jelly.  In a bad year Rosemary, Figs, Artichokes and other tender perennials are vulnerable.

The end of The Darkness is the return of life to the earth.  Seed catalogs arrive in the mail.  Adventurous gardeners start their earliest transplants on kitchen counters or in heated greenhouses.  Garlic shoots and tulips poke through mulch.  Often somewhere amidst the rain and frozen ground, we get a mid-winter clearing, long enough to get a jump on bed preparation by turning under some cover crops.

Earthworks, Construction and Hazards

The flood season continues, with even colder rains.  The snow level fluctes up and down the mountains.  If a heavy rain coincides with a rising snow level there is the potential for a deluge.  The difference between life-as-usual and a flood can be the sequence in which storm cells dump their loads in headwaters, such that the peak flows of two tributaries are synchronized into a 50-year flood.  As the climate warms, the flood season will shift earlier, and snowfields will become unstable.   In high mountain rivers, there is a second peak of flows in spring when the snow melt makes freshets.  In our future rivers, the snow and rain will come together in The Darkness with torrents like we’ve never seen.

Politics and Government

The new year signals the beginning of the legislative season.  New officials are sworn in, and all the preparations of fall are rewarded with committee meetings, information requests, and program fire drills.  Tour buses bring targeted testimonials to the capital.  At the state, first come the new laws that shape the purposes of government, and then wrangling over the operating budget to pay for it all, and finally the competition over the parsing of the capital budget, with the size of the biennial pie based on the cycles of bond maturity, and the borrowing limits of the state.

Previous:  Frost

Next:  Budswell

This post is part of a standing body of work to capture the seasonal nature of our lives, and how they might apply to the work of the Ecosystem Guild and Restoration Camping.  

Posted on

7. Frost

Late Autumn

November 5 to December 22

The beginning of Frost are the last harvest festivals of Samhain, Holloween.  The days are short.  Frost becomes Darkness after Yule and shortest day of the Winter Solstice. Midwinter is celebrated throughout the temperate lands: Alban Arthan, Brumalia, Dongzhi, Korochun, Sanghamitta, Shalako, Yaldā, Yule, Ziemassvētki, Saturnalia, Saint Lucy’s Day.

Vast cyclones on wet ground bring floods.  And then the clear days bring hard frost.  Some years the rain won’t stop for weeks on end.  This is a holiday season, when families and friends gather in warm houses, and those without houses face misery in our rainforest climate.

Wild Creatures and Wildcraft

The last salmon are the coho, or silver salmon, which push deeply into the headwater streams.  The fall hunt is in the freezer of the good hunters.  The mushroom bloom is done with the hard frost.  An unreliable mix of rain and snow and sleet drive people out of the foothills and forest lands.

Beaver hear the trickling water and are called to action.  They build higher and wider to capture the rain.  The tree frogs sing a soft cold song as they return to their wetlands.

REVegetation

The citizens of the leafy kingdom has finally fallen asleep. Tree planters and earth workers don suits of PVC coated nylon and broad brimmed hats, and get to work.  All the planning was finished back in summer.  Marking zones, digging out, hauling and wheeling, placing, digging in.   Every day that is neither frozen or under a torrent we rearrange the forests and fields.  Don’t worry about watering, or even leaving roots bare.  Branches are cut and stuck in mud.  Roots are arranged in cold shallow beds.  All the greenery is deep asleep.

You keep warm with tea and gloved hands stuffed in steaming mulch piles.  Large breakfasts and labor keep your body warm.  Out in the wet you notice that most of the rain isn’t really that heavy.  Famous last words, and the sky sometimes rips open in a deluge.  Wetlands fill and grown and join until the fully saturated patterns of the earth are revealed.

Frost has kills all sign of the perennial forbs except dead leaves.  Plant identification depends on bark color, lenticles, thorn patterns, and the shapes and configuration of bud scales.  Weeks of planting create fields of twigs.

THE Garden

Only leaves in greenhouses and the hardiest of species remain.  The nibbling weekly harvest of roots and leaves gradually depletes the stock build in the plantings begin in harvest and earlier.  There will be no new food until Budswell.  Storm damage thrashes at both structures and crops.  Hardest frosts take their toll.

Earthworks, Construction and Hazards

Now the climate prods and tests the assumptions of engineers.  Floods, erosion, and mass wasting tell a kind of truth.  Frost is likely to bring the first floods to the floodplains.  Sandbags and rip rap, staged in the dry seasons, are brought into play.  Helicopters hover over flooded fields taking pictures and telling stories as trackhoes reach into raging rivers to keep wood from racking on piers.  Livestock are moved to high ground.  Unstable slopes slump over highways and railroads.  Winter storms rip at bulkheads and carve spirals and arcs of sand and gravel.  The earth works itself.

Politics and Government

Right after Holloween, in a maic crescendo of mass media the elections come, and then go.  Some shake their fists, beaming with pride and newfound power.  Others lament in private.  The mood of the electorate is endlessly reinterpreted by pundits.

In the remaining time before the state legislative storm, everyone stages their stories, organizes and publishes their lists, negotiates with competitors, and then goes home for the holidays.  Back in Washington DC, the congress may or may not do anything of significance, before the holiday recess.  This will likely not include a budget.  The new year will come.

Previous:  Leaf Fall

Next:  The Darkness

This post is part of a standing body of work to capture the seasonal nature of our lives, and how they might apply to the work of the Ecosystem Guild and Restoration Camping.  

Posted on

6. Leaf Fall

Early Autumn

September 23 to November 5

The beginning of Leaf Fall is marked by the Autumn Equinox, Neo-pagans call it Maban, Persian Mehregan, and nearby is the Chinese lunar mid-autumn festival.  Nights will be longer than days for six months.  Leaf Fall gives way to Frost half way to the Winter Solstice, around the traditional festivals of Holloween, Samhain, and All Saints Day.

This is the end of the growing season of the Eight Season Year.  The rains return in earnest, and the ground is thoroughly wetted again, and the cyclonic storms begin their rhythmic tumble off the Pacific.  Towards the end of leaf fall, the big-leaf maples drop their floppy load of wet leaves, putting the forest to bed for winter.

Wild Creatures and Wildcraft

With the rains, fall-running salmon that have been holding near stream mouths all over Puget Sound begin to return, first to the larger rivers, then to streams.  The nights become cold, and fog clogs the morning.  The first tentative frosts usually comes sometime in leaf-fall and the orb-weaver spiders collect dew on their webs.

Deer hunting season is declared in the public and private forest lands.  Bulbs and roots fattened by summer sun are ready to dig.  The warm rain on wet ground brings forth the fungal bloom.  Chantrelle mushrooms are one of the prides of Cascadia.  We rarely venture out without some kind of rain gear.

REVegetation

With cool temperatures and moist ground, the out-planting season begins.  Potted stock are ready to go, and deciduous stock can be made bare-root as soon as leaves fall.  Stools and layers are severed and moved.  Perennials gone dormant may reveal their location, aiding their division.  Bare-root nurseries won’t ship until next season, and in busy years, orders should have been placed back in summer, but those who have developed local propagation gardens can begin revetation.

Seeds scattered in summer swell in the rain and morning dew, and if uninhibited by some kind of biochemical delay, germinate in a flush of seedlings.  Many will lay low with a couple leaves, until spring, with roots pushing down to gain a head start over spring geminants.  Grasses and meadows that went dormant in the drought may put out a last flush of fresh leaves.  It is likely too late to gather seed.

THE Garden

The garden is put to bed for winter and the incessant watering of summer finally comes to a close in a cool blanket of oceanic moisture.  Winter crops come into their full form, even as they slowly slow new growth as the darkness approaches.  Everything remaining outside is gathered in.  Winter squash, apples and pears, potatoes.  Roots are covered in mulch.  Even under plastic the last tomatoes stagger to a green and orange finish, ending up on the kitchen windowsill.   A green fuzz of cover crops is mixed with winter germinants like chickweed and stray mustards. The last few seeds are are sown, mostly those with the most robust germination like winter rye or hairy vetch.  Fall planted bulbs from garlic to tulips are replanted under mulch.   Anything left bare is finally slathered in maple leaves.

Earthworks and Construction

All earthwork with machines must be complete or potentially face a nightmare of mud and erosion.  Cold-germinating grasses like annual ryegrass are used to stabilize cut earth.  The ravages of earth moving machines are now tended to with mulch, from straw mulch to hog fuel to ramial chips.  Seeding and out-planting begins.

The first rains reveal new pathways for concentrated flow, that may require more aggressive erosion control.  The ground now moist is more yielding to hand work with shovels.  As soon as leaves drop, and even before, species like willow, whips and cuttings are harvested, bundled, buried, staked and woven to slow the flow of water and stabilize stream banks.

Hazards

The rains finish the fire season and remind us of flood season.  Emergency managers from FEMA, State Military, and Counties gather in the river floodplains and rehearse their plans for when the first big storms return.

Politics and Government

This is the heart of election season: mailings, robo-calls, door knocking, corner-sign-waving.  Candidates speak boldly in vague language, and few difficult decisions are made by sitting officials facing re-election.  Out of public view, various constituencies and stakeholders are preparing for legislative session, comparing notes, developing direction, and waiting to hear what the elections bring.  Seeds are organized and planted, for the window for preparing legislation is short, between elections and the holiday season.

By the end of Leaf Fall, the governor’s agency budgets are available in bits and pieces, including various draft project lists and priorities, all getting dressed up for the benefit of legislators, as they consider the priorities of the State of Washington.

Federal budgets are typically in limbo, with a new fiscal year underway, but rarely does congress actually pass a budget until after elections.  Various fiscal and strategic gymnastics are common for this shoulder season, as agency leadership tries to read the tea leaves of congressional processes, and programs encourage their stakeholders to educate you elected officials.

Previous:  Harvest

Next:  Frost

This post is part of a standing body of work to capture the seasonal nature of our lives, and how they might apply to the work of the Ecosystem Guild and Restoration Camping.  

Posted on

5. Harvest

Late Summer

August 5 to September 22

The beginning of Harvest Season is marked by old European festivals celebrating the first grain harvest, Freyfaxi (Norse), Lammas (Celtic and  Pagan), Lammastide (from Shakespeare), Lughnasadh (Gaelic), and the Feast of First Fruits all fall at the beginning of August. It is likely that every temperate climate culture has its equivalent. In this season the grain-tax was levied among feudal serfs–the beginning of civilization as we know it. The Harvest Season ends with the autumn equinox, and the beginning of Fall.

This is the driest and hottest season of the Eight Season Year. Any confusion about the onset of drought has passed. Rain is occasional and rarely wets the ground. Weeks of hot weather become relentless.  But it won’t last.  As harvest wears on little signs suggest the coming cool rains.

Wild Creatures

The salmon haven’t yet begun to spawn. Some early runs may be in the rivers already, huddling in deep pools of cold water.  Young-of-the-year coho salmon are fattening in beaver ponds and forested wetlands, also looking for shady seeps that promise oxygen. The birds have fledged, and young-of-the-year deer are growing fast looking for the last succulent pastures. The gathering of seeds and nuts begins in earnest.  The jays shake hazelnuts daily waiting for the right moment to begin their work.  The day length is shortening with increasing speed. Toward the end of harvest season fall will make its first visit.  A rain that doesn’t feel like summer, the smell of the cooling evening, and the changing quality of light at dusk and dawn as summer fades.

REVegetation

No transplanting or propagating if you can help it.  Wait for the deep rains. The soils surface is dry, and moisture is retreating deeper every day. Roots push down following water or fall dormant.  Only wet pastures or land under irrigation put on new growth, as shoots harden and store energy for the future.  Monitoring surveys are finishing up, as naming of more difficult species requires intact flowers or seed heads.

In nursery beds, layers and stools laid in early spring may keep growing roots if given water.   Everything in pots needs water daily. Seed collection, however, is in full swing, as the last of the spring perennials harden and shatter.  Fruits ripen, and fireweed, aster and goldenrod are finishing flowers and setting seed.  The rain may come sooner than later.

Out-plantings will live or die in this season. The drought will test the propriety of species selected, and reveal any mistaken assumptions about soil moisture. Deep irrigation followed by a drying period can help drive roots to deeper earth, but is expensive. The last mulch should have already been laid. Without hauling or pumping water you are now at the mercy of the fates, and your past choices.

THE Garden

Even with irrigation, the garden peas yellow in the heat, and the second plantings of spring are ready for harvest.  The summer crops come into full swing—beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, squash.  Smaller fruits give way to larger fruits, and the first apples ripen. The overflowing garden is canned, pickled, frozen and dried.

Harvest is also the second planting season, a window for seeding and trasplanting fall and winter crops (with religious watering).  Tough and tender greens, spring harvest cole crops, and roots will mature as the cool rains return, and hold through the winter. If beds are empty beds we plant cover crops that hold through winter—clovers, fava beans, vetch, and overwintering grains.

Water is the life blood for our shallow rooted vegetables. Cisterns and reservoirs gradually drain to empty. The results of our sloppy water management becomes clear. Streams slow and warm, and if we take too much, become too hot to support life.  Farmers and cities drain rivers, and pump water from the ground based on an arcane system of rights and seniority. Only converted wetlands yield without irrigation.

WildCraft

Nettles and cattail are coming ripe as green flesh turns to fiber.  Wood from last winter’s harvest is seasoning and sloppy wood piles get stacked and covered before the rain.  It is too late for greens, and early for roots, but the wild berries are in full swing: red huckleberry, thimbleberry, salmonberry, amalanchier, followed by the vast thickets of salal and mountain huckleberries.  On the shoreline shellfish foragers take advantage of the last daytime lower low tides.

Earthworks and Construction

With the streams at lowest flow, this is the hurried peak of in-water construction. Stream reconstruction, log jam installation, levee and dike modification, and excavations to restore wetlands are preferably completed “in-the-dry” and isolated from aquatic life.   Restoration teams, working under detailed permits, push hard to get work complete before the “fish window” closes, before the first salmon runs return with the rains.

Hazards

The dry forests surrounding the Salish Sea are burning in earnest.  When the wind shifts, smoke can blows over the mountains and settle in the Lowlands, irritating eyes and throats. This is fire season. Emergency managers loose sleep, as uncontrolled burns rage in overstocked forests after a century of fire suppression. Citizens lament, and power brokers look for advantage, to lobby for more timber harvest, or to bolster fire management budgets.

Politics and Government

Our part-time state legislature is in recess and focused on re-election. The federal legislatures observes its famous “August recess”, when representatives return to their home districts and consult their stakeholders.  An endless parade of town meetings and local lobbying. The primary elections are done, and the political battlefield is clearly set. All citizen’s initiatives have been filed. Campaigns and their candidates begin the final long push.

State agencies are quietly building their proposals, projects and programs for the governor’s budget team, and programs vie for attention from leadership.  Even years are “on-years” where in the upcoming dead of winter, the big biennial budget will determine the fortunes of every program. Bureaucrats take turns taking vacations, meetings are hard to schedule, and vacation responses clog e-mail inboxes, until school starts again, and everyone returns to their desks.

Next years conservation grants are mostly under technical review, with grant writers busy in the field on their construction projects.  The state funding programs will prepare packages before the end of the calendar year, while federal funding may pop up unexpectedly to annoy project managers focused on field work.  The federal fiscal year is wrapping up, in a flurry of last second contracting, program metrics, and performance reviews.

Previous:  The Drying

Next:  Leaf Fall

This post is part of continuously updated body of work to capture the seasonal nature of our lives, and how they might apply to the work of the Ecosystem Guild and Restoration Camping.  

Posted on

Update 1 :: 2018 Harvest

In Springtime 2018 I purchased the ecosystemguild.org domain, built a website and started suggesting we could build a volunteer restoration collective based on reciprocity, shared knowledge, and direct action. After a flurry of work, I’ve been taking a break to gather my thoughts. Four months later its time to report on the current situation, the lessons learned, and my proposed direction.

Web Infrastructure and Content

STATUS

We have a domain and third party web host for our WordPress site. The site has light introductory text, eleven articles describing a restoration camping vision, and mechanisms for promoting and tracking events. We can expand the site for paypal sales, membership, reservations, or other functions. The site funnels to a Facebook group (129 members) and an integrated MailChimp mailing list (105 subscribers with a 39% open rate). We also have a LinkedIn group (52 members). For people who have expressed some direct interest in getting closer to the project, we have a a RiseUp listserve (21 members), a Trello board, and associated google drive linked to a corporate e-mail account. The Salish Sea Restoration wiki provides a mechanisms for curating topic or place-based information. Through posting articles on social media, 522 users have make 902 visits to the website with a two-minute average session. With diligent social media posting we can push up to around 20 hits a day, but that tails off quickly. After a period of no promotion we get a hit every couple days.

LESSONS

Writing content is labor intensive, and makes sense where it serves another function, such as clarifying strategy or promoting an event. I suspect we can maximize cost effectiveness of web content by 1) making content useful is some other way, and 2) cross posting from other groups, or promoting content on the Salishsearestoraiton.org wiki.

DIRECTION

I’d like to create a set of eight articles, one for each season. Each article would be updated over time, as we get more sophisticated with our timing. This also gives us a recyclable set of articles that can be republished on annual intervals. These articles ultimately support a watershed restoration project management curriculum.

Communications and Community Development

STATUS

My current practice is to post to the facebook group and then “share” the post with a set of related regional grounds (for example, Restore Cascadia). Bi-seasonally (every 6.5 weeks or so) I send an email update to the MailChimp list, including any new articles or other events. My goal has been to have this update coincide with work plan review, and public event to date held at the library, a public park, or a local restaurant.

LESSONS

Public events are labor intensive but have created a small network of more engaged individuals (the listserve) and several valuable leads.  However one-on-one interviews and chance conversations have been just as productive if not more so.  I think an improvement would be to have pre-scheduled planning and social meetings at a fixed location and time, located within the target watershed, and focused on next steps while allowing newcomers to connect with the project.

The eight-times-per-year newsletter and planning session feels like an appropriate schedule. Long enough to allow for meaningful work, but frequent enough to maintain contact. However there is I think very little interest in “planning something”. I think we’ll be much more effective developing and marketing products, rather that attracting people to co-create an idea. This is disappointing but not surprising.

DIRECTION

My proximate goal is to develop a modular educational program, that is focused on 1) watershed risk analysis, 2) watershed vegetation management strategies, and 3) government engagement strategies and tactics.  I would test this program in association with specific watersheds. These events and content generated for these activities provides a stronger community building base of activity.

Through education I want to focus effort on building and empowering the existing direct-action volunteer restoration community. The existing volunteer mobilization system is competitive and designed to serve institutions rather than build a dynamic and self-organizing volunteer network. I will approach existing restoration partners and learn how we can empower their volunteer communities.

Institutional Structure

STATUS AND DIRECTION

After researching operating agreements, and templates for cooperative and sociocratic governance I am preparing a LLC operating agreement.  This will allow me to enter into agreements and manage accounts, and bring new individuals into a formal collaborative relationship. I have a few collaborators willing to review, but I am now assuming that partners want to see the product, not design the vehicle.  The function of the LLC will be to run camps and projects and create a foundation to support volunteer empowerment (either free standing or as a project of an existing 501c3 non-profit corporate partner.)

Camping, Tools, and Nomadic Infrastructure

STATUS

At this point I am focussed on developing a personal kit with which I can support field camps. I have a trailer hitch and have purchased and am assembling a 4 x 8 foot, 1720 lb capacity trailer.  I have sketch designs for modular components that can be mounted on the trailer and expand to a tarp-covered workshop, tool shed, kitchen and classroom. This would be an initial “expeditionary” unit, and could demonstrate a number of technologies that would transfer to nomadic residential restoration camping. My personal hand-tool kit is relatively complete, but only supports one worker. Existing volunteer organizations offer tool loans to support larger crews over the short term. I have designs for a mobile rocket stove core using perilite and refractory cement for cooking or heating that need to be tested. I have located designs for a well-designed, self-contained and mobile composting toilet system based on 55-gallon polyethelene drums.

DIRECTION

I am planning on developing this expeditionary kit and testing it at day-camps, where we provide self-contained food, water, and comfort on site with local materials. This will support both publicity and give a field-testing opportunity. Restoration and workshop events will generate donations to support expansion of unique equipment not available from local partners (for example: construction materials, solar water pumping, broad forks, scythes, or resources for tool maintenance and stewardship).

Scatter Creek Prospecting

STATUS

I invested substantial time in building a potential relationship with Heernett Environmental Foundation and its lands, a large conservation landowner in the Scatter Creek Watershed. They were a “rural land trust” with a “working land” ethos, and so were supportive of active land management including camping, much more so that “urban environmentalist” land trusts. Staffing turnover within Heernett has delayed any relationship there. Multiple calls to director of Center for Natural Lands Management, also active in the watershed, have not been returned. Veterans Ecological Trades Collective is in the early stages of establishing an incubator farm and training facility also in the Scatter Creek Watershed, but the location next to the freeway is less attractive for destination camping. 

DIRECTION

I suspect Scatter Creek will become an important watershed over time, but the challenge to access Heernett lands and the distance from the South Sound population core reduces my enthusiasm for Scatter Creek as an initial watershed. Based on some initial queries and conversations, I am not anticipating strong volunteer engagement from the local community around restoration. CNLM does not appear to be a motivated partner at this time. I suspect the Guild project needs to start in a population core to build a community base, rather than a location farther afield that requires more effort to lure community. In the future, the Heernett lands on the Chehalis River at the Scatter Creek Community Farm, amidst the Independence Valley farming community may provide the best local opportunity for stepping into a farming landscape with our proposed stewardship and reciprocity model.  I aim to continue promotion and support for VETC with mapping and in other little ways where I can, ultimately they may be partners in developing a second-generation expeditionary kit through a grant.  I will continue to connect with CNLM staff as part of a larger community of volunteer recruiters.

Forestland Prospecting

STATUS

I had discussions with Nisqually Land Trust about the community forest initiative on Busy Wild Creek in the headwaters of the Mashel watershed..  These lands are adjacent to the Mt Tahoma Trails Association easements, a large cross-country volunteer-managed hut-to-hut ski cooperative. Nisqually Community Forest and neighbors may prove to be a good target, and Busy Wild is a core for Nisqually River steelhead productivity. The site is even farther from a population core than Scatter Creek and so the same challenges are present. There are also “community forest initiatives” on the state-managed Teanaway Project and through the Chimacum Ridge Vision of Jefferson County Land Trust.

I’ve had a few short conversations with a private landowner in the Decker Creek Watershed in the Satsop near Matlock. The Satsop watershed is controlled by Green Diamond, and Decker Creek is one of many corporate-controlled industrial forest watershed. The Satsop is one of four priority watershed for fishery enhancement in the Chehalis Basin Strategy. The interested landowner is within a patch of in-holdings known as “Deckerville” upstream of a recent Capitol Land Trust acquisition, a large wetland complex. This may be an interesting opportunity, but is again removed from our core regional population, and I’d want to explore the relationship with Green Diamond and other local partners before focusing operations in the Satsop.

DIRECTION

Learning how to support “community forest” efforts, and building relationships for direct interaction between nearby forestland catchments and local communities offers a very exciting opportunity for reconnecting rural production, urban consumption, and forest stewardship. I believe that stepping into a forested headwaters is a logical next step following more community development within an ex-urban setting, and as we develop guild community and capacity for self-sufficient field work.

Green Cove Creek Prospecting

STATUS

Green Cove Creek Watershed is a small coastal catchment which occupies most of Cooper Point Peninsula, half in the City of Olympia, and half in unincorporated Thurston County. It includes the Grass Lakes Nature Reserve, eight Capital Land Trust properties and easements, portions of The Evergreen State College, as well as several small organic CSAs and farms providing food for the Olympia Area (e.g. Calliope, Common Ground, Township 18). An expansive wetland complex feeds a very small coho and cutthroat stream. Despite designation as a conservation watershed by City and County, it is being modified by residential development pressure, and the hydrologic integrity of the system, compromised by colonization, will be severely tested under population growth and climate change. The threatened Olympic Mud Minnow has been observed within the wetland complex along with a beaver population, creating some interesting legal entanglements. Because of city regulation there are considerable open space landscapes and unmanaged trails that have limited stewardship and appear barely used by the surrounding community, but which can provide plant materials and an educational resources. We have connected with a couple of motivated conservation land owners and the City of Olympia, and there are restoration sites, and a small existing volunteer community working at Grass Lakes.

LESSONS

I am coming to the conclusion that it will be very difficult to start both residential camping, on-the-ground restoration, and community development all simultaneously. The on-the-ground work is critical to maintain a direct action focus, and for skill development.  Community development is the center of the ecosystem guild-restoration camping model.  Because of this it makes sense for camping to come later, emerging from the volunteer restoration community as we are ready. This suggests our first phase should be building and empowering a volunteer community which will be done most efficiently from within our most restoration-sympathetic population core (the Olympia “city-state”). Many of the qualities and technologies of a residential camp can be developed in the context of a “day camp” on city or private conservation lands. These day camp sites can also be developed for managed native vegetation that support watershed operations.

DIRECTION

I am planning on moving forward with a “Green Cove Creek Watershed approach” by verifying volunteer networks and site access and the willingness of the landowners to actively managed native vegetation for production. Such a strategy would focus on community development within the watershed, refining a watershed strategy built from existing conservation efforts, and developing a volunteer organization and empowerment system in synergy with existing parcel-based actors. Our goal will be for this community to become self-organizing, and serve as a model and springboard into similar ex-urban watersheds (for example: Mission/Ellis, Woodard/Woodland), and also to serve as the foundation for expeditions into the agricultural and forestland landscapes surrounding the Olympia city-state.

Eight organizations all recruit volunteers in the Olympia “city-state”. The proximity of Green Cove Creek to The Evergreen State College, and to a lesser degree South Puget Sound Community College, creates the opportunity to match local residents and technical support, with youthful enthusiasm and academic projects to strengthen community development.

Posted on

Multiple Forms of Capital—Building Ecosystems Among Neighbors

Do all relationships hinge on money?  Obviously not.  But why is cash compensation so important in some partitions of life and not for others?  Do you need cash to help your grandmother?

Consider the dynamics of volunteer labor in the environmental sector.  Volunteer engagement is recognized as intellectually necessary, but not celebrated as efficient or effective.  Volunteer labor shows up unpredictably in three to five hour blocks.  We offer sub-optimal tools and set them to work wherever and whenever the money runs out.  Volunteers are often tended by a  high-turnover volunteer coordinator or intern.  Few shops invest deeply in the skills and knowledge of their communities and there may be little continuity between one experience and the next.  These dynamics are exacerbated by a system of distributed projects that arrive suddenly and then depart depending on grant availability.  Each such shop competes for a share of government appropriations which define the scope of their effort.  Each shop struggles between allocating labor to doing on-the-ground work , and grabbing and maintaining the attention of officials and funders.  Projects may not address root causes of ecosystem decline, or otherwise pour water in a leaking bucket.  We don’t expect landowners to be stewards, and most landowners don’t know anything about our watershed management.  Agency acquisition, and removal of people, is celebrated as the sure way to protect the landbase.

So in this system, who holds the watershed vision?  What does the community think about regulation?  Do their politicians and officials need to have a coherent ecosystem platform?

I am not interested in another environmental hierarchy, with a board and an executive, competing to get grants to pay staff to work another strategic plan.  This environmental project system is vital and full of good people doing good work–but it is not a system for empowering and building responsibility in community.  We talk about community engagement like a marketing campaign.  I am increasingly suspicious that we are missing the actual target.

We are focused on cash both because of a melange of social conditioning, and because our institutions punish those who don’t cleave to the written and unwritten rules of the competitive market.  But what is the necessary scope of ecosystem stewardship?  Where does this obligation to restore the watershed live?  Who understands enough to care?  What makes stewardship a living part of our culture?  How do we retain and maintain the flow of information?  How do stewardship skills pass from generation to generation?  Where are YOU responsible for?

We need to start playing the long game.

The Ecosystem Guild vision could be described as a union of ecosystem volunteers.  It is a egalitarian organization where members support each other in working towards shared goals.  We invest in our membership to increase our capabilities, because belonging and knowledge gives us strength. We negotiate more rewarding and durable relationships among guild members, ecosystems, and local recovery efforts.  We take apprentices, talk to new neighbors, and pitch in.  The power of our union comes from detailed local knowledge, and in creating mutually beneficial relationships so that all members are nourished.

This system has functions that are not yet present, to enable a reciprocal relationship among peoples and land, and a local reintegration of cash and non-cash economies around the management of the commons.  We have more financial capital than just about anywhere on earth, but we are still impoverished when it comes to ecosystem stewardship.

  • Social Capital – what makes humans powerful is our ability to sustain complex organizations and coordinate our labor.
  • Experiential Capital – the only way to act effectively in complex ecological system is to have the experience in those systems to see that pattern and design the intervention.
  • Intellectual Capital – as we work, we accumulate stories, measurements and concepts that we can give to others, to support our shared work
  • .Living Capital – the beauty of ecosystems is that they are self-replicating.  We can grow most of what we need to do ecosystem restoration and our campsites and old projects if well-designed become a resources.
  • Cultural Capital – the combination of our stories, rituals, taboos, and beliefs become the wellspring from which our children learn and act.
  • Material Capital – restoration camping creates a pool of shelter, technologies and tools that will serve us for restoration or for disaster relief.
  • Spiritual Capital – perhaps the greatest gift of restoring ecosystems is the connection to place, and to self and our many purposes that are far greater than the cash economy.

(This way of describing capital was borrowed from Ethan Rolland and Gregory Landua)

Our hypothesis is that a culture of stewardship will not emerge from a cash transaction (almost by definition!)  Stewardship revolves around personal relationship with place, and that this relationship is best defined in terms direct and tangible.  Stewardship capacity is build over time.  So we do what 300,000 years of humanity has done.  We take a piece of our short lives, and go tend to the ecosystem with our community.  By forming a union of stewards, we remove the inter-mediation of the agency and the non-profit, and instead of being pushed to do tasks of little consequence, we turn and pull the whole of society, industry, and government into the true generational work sitting right in front of us.

Posted on

Not an Entertainment Business – A Pledge to Support Shared Systems

Part of the vital challenge presented by ecosystem camping is to get past a model where we primarily consume resources created by others, but rather where we share resources that we produce.  To make it more complex, our producer-created system must be able to accommodate the constant flow of people through camp, manage apprenticeship, and encouraging and respecting leadership, all in a way that is easy and comfortable.  This comfort is supported by a system of stories, rituals and taboos.

Restoration camping is not an entertainment business.  It is more like a social club.  Because the club lives together on the land, our stories, rituals and taboos are unique to this now unusual context.  The underlying guild and camp institutions are focused on setting the table: arranging land access, gathering and loaning tools and technologies, maintaining an information architecture, and cultivating membership.  The guild members must create the feast.

Cattail provide spring vegetables, summer pollen, and winter roots to supplement a simple diet.  They rapidly colonize the water line and grow by rhizome extension into deeper water.

At first it will be a pretty rudimentary feast.  But the purpose of restoration camping is to cultivate a community of exceptional capabilities.  This cultivation of individual capability is perhaps our most important resource.

cultivation of individual capability is perhaps our most important resource

The camp is a common resources, strategically situated within the watershed, which is also a common resource.  The camp, just like the watershed, is divided into a set of systems.  Management of the commons depends on shared stories and rituals and taboos around these systems.  These elements of culture are established by a camp team.  When you visit a new camp as a guild member, your obligation is to learn and understand the systems and their stewardship, based on the stories, rituals and taboos of a camp.  These traditions need to be simple, and well suited to the unusual context of living on the land and doing restoration projects.

  • Camp Team – a circle of guild members controls the legal institution that is responsible for the operation of the camp.  That team is responsible for making sure that all systems are well defined and under stewardship.  Every camp has an up-to-date bulletin board that organizes systems, presents maps and land access agreements, and roles. All camps are private, and your access and residence at camp depends on the consent of the camp team.  You let the camp team know when you arrive, and when you depart.
  • By combining a multi-purpose common area, with dispersed sleeping we can minimize our impact on the landscape while providing both privacy and social areas.

    Camp Landscape – the landscape around the camp is cultivated for beauty, access, privacy, production of wild and semi-wild foods, plant stock for restoration, and building materials.  All these functions are provided by a set of living systems, and someone at camp is responsible for these systems.  This is our living capital.  Generally people stay on a set of common areas, trails and paths, until they get some education in the vegetation systems.  All members are responsible for gently but clearly minding children in production areas, while other areas are set aside for unfettered exploration.

  • Self-feeding rocket stoves use thermal draft to drive a clean burning cooking surface using small diameter fuel

    Food System – restoration camps have a mobile kitchen and hearth system, with shared kit for preparing and cooking food.  In our ecosystem, wood burning is the principle energy source so we design and use high-draft systems for maximizing combustion, complemented by biogas or solar cookery where feasible.  The camp steward maintains a shared larder of staples, and when it makes sense, contracts with local farmers for a supply of produce.  When you sign up to go camping you join a cooking groups that fits your diet.  Members of the guild accept responsibility for learning about and maintaining the food system, and there is usually some education for new campers.  The camp does not cook for you or control what you cook, or who you cook and eat with.

  • Host Lands – the camp is located within a set of legal parcels.  The camp team establishes terms and conditions for land access, described by a set of maps, rituals and taboos.
  • Water Supply – the camp team provides a water supply.  That water supply may be potable or non-potable.  Each camper is then responsible for using that water supply appropriately, both within their self-organized cooking group, and for their personal water consumption.  The character of the water supply is made clear, and the camp team may make suggestions for purification as necessary. Beaver landscapes, coho salmon habitat, and stormwater infiltration are likely to be important focus areas for community-based watershed management.
  • Projects – A member of the guild takes leadership of each project that is then shared with the camp team.  Campers agree to participate in projects as part of their stay – somewhere around four hours of project work a day.  Any camper can propose a project to the camp team and then seek support from campers.  The camp team can ask for members to come help on needed projects.  Projects are basically of two kinds:  camp tending and watershed restoration.  We try to design camp systems well, so that we can spend a maximum of project time on watershed restoration.  Generally projects are scheduled the day before through a discussion among the camp team and project leads, with work in the cool morning after breakfast.  Being a project lead requires education in the risk management system.
  • Education – Any member of the guild can make an offering to share knowledge, or request knowledge about either the camp systems or watershed restoration.  In some cases education and projects go together.  To work on a project or use a system, you may need to get some education.  Generally education happens in the afternoon and evening.  There are a number of standard trainings necessary for camp participation.  These are given on the first evenings of your first visit.  Some camps may revolve around special education programs where campers pay for the educator.
  • Effective tools are dangerous, and so risk management needs to create spaces for people to become more effective by using dangerous tools.

    Risk Management – We have a shared system to ensure that everyone is responsible for themselves, has all the knowledge and skills necessary to be responsible and safe, and to respond to an emergency.  The landowner only provides access, and is not responsible for our conduct or safety.  The camp team is a legal entity that provides a site where members of our  club can reside, and works with project leads to ensure each project meets guild standards for safety and organization.  Each camper is either on-project or off-project, and the responsibility for safety on-project is clearly defined for each project as sponsored either by the guild, by a third party contractor, or watershed partner.

Ultimately becoming a member of the guild, and a restoration camper is about making a pledge to participate in a community.  The pledge is universal to all camps and might look something like this:

The Ecosystem Guild Pledge (First Draft)
  1. UNDERSTAND PURPOSE – I go restoration camping, to restore ecosystems, and increase the capabilities of the guild by cultivating knowledge, developing and teaching skills, and caring for the bodies, hearts, and minds of my fellow campers.  I understand that as a member of the guild I am personally responsible for the camp experience.
  2. KNOW SYSTEMS – When I arrive at camp I will assess the systems of the camp, and find roles by which my skills will make the camp stronger in its function.  Before using or tending a system, I will consult with the steward of the system and honor their leadership by making sure to understand and adhere to any rituals or taboos involved in the management of the system.  I recognize that the proper use of some systems may require education and I will not use systems where the camp team has decided that education is necessary for proper use.
  3. TAKE RESPONSIBILITY – I am responsible for learning how to master and care for every tool and system I use.  When I pick up a tool or use a system, I am assuming responsibility for the quality, condition, and function of work, for the well-being of those around me, and for my own safety.
  4. RESPECT THE HOST – I will honor the boundaries and agreement with the landowner host, and will explore those lands following the specific rituals and taboos defined in the agreement between the camp team and the land owner.  I am personally responsible for understanding those agreements.
  5. HONOR LEADERSHIP – I will honor the intuition and judgement of those who  have accepted responsibility for any part of a camp system, and encourage and support the unique learning and development that comes from having authority over a system.  I will ask to join in leadership, and will collaborate with those that have come to camp before.
  6. DEMONSTRATE LEADERSHIP – For the parts of the camp system that I have accepted responsibility I will actively cultivate the continuous improvement of that system, by asking my fellow campers for advice and feedback.  The function of my leadership is to support future leaders by developing and documenting better systems, and then passing them on.  I will look for opportunities to share and cultivate leadership in others, and will work to bring strangers into groups and projects, while honoring and acting on my intuition and judgement.
  7. SHARE IDENTITY – I am not anonymous.  I will introduce myself to other guild members, and will share my full and true name with any member of the guild at any time requested.  I will wear some kind of name tag as much as possible.  All guild members have registered with a camp team and the guild.  If a non-guild member is at camp, I will let the camp team know.
  8. RESOLVE PROBLEMS – If I find myself in conflict or feeling unsafe in any way, I will immediately talk to two members of the camp team about my concerns in private, so that we can fully focus on my concerns.  The camp team is always available to address concerns about conflict or safety.  If my concerns around conflict or safety are not satisfied by working with the camp team, I will leave the camp, and report my experience in detail to guild leadership.
Posted on

Restoration Camping Design Principles

If we want ecosystem restoration and stewardship based on honor and reciprocity we need to develop new kinds of institutions that support that work. If we don’t clearly define our objectives, we’ll likely find ourselves back on the worn path, in a hierarchical non-profit corporation paying people to work—it is what we are used do doing.  Restoration Camping is a strategy for voluntary collaboration that lives parallel to the marketplace.  We don’t replace our other institutions, but we create a watershed home for us to gather, focus, and work.  This is a design challenge.  Here are principles that could inform this design:

  1. We efficiently restore ecosystem capital through direct action.  Ecosystems are changed with work.  Our system must apply a maximum of effort on-the-ground.  We live in the ecosystem we are restoring, and achieve the greatest change with the least effort by applying systems thinking. We  know we are successful through project extent and observing the change in vegetation, biodiversity, and moisture over an increasing area.
  2. Our system thrives on membership dues and low nightly fees. We can operate and grow a camp without grants or sponsors, but we pursue grants to go faster. We limit expenses by leveraging knowledge, labor and goodwill. We  know we are successful by our ability to produce a camp with minimal money, and through long range cash flow planning and accounting.
  3. We build personal relationships. The visible work of the camp community inspires stewardship. Each guild-member is a node of our network.  We embrace watershed residents as colleagues and invite them to contribute. We know we are successful through private land access, and material support for restoration.
  4. All participants are nourished. Guild membership gives us meaningful experiences and skills, friendships, a mission larger than ourselves aligned with our values and vision, networks of ideas and information, and access to raw natural resources. We know we are successful through the feedback of guild-members, and our increasing numbers.
  5. Camp residence demonstrates regenerative living. The camping lifestyle produces much and consumes little.  We develop elegant technologies that create comfort and ease. We support watershed producers.  Beneficial residency is part of the project and the design challenge. We know we are successful through resource audits, and adoption of our technologies outside of camp.
  6. Information is cycled and retained. In order to be creative, we design habits and leverage self-organizing open-source technologies to store and find information rapidly and efficiently. This involves a custom content management system with adaptable work flows, labor saving rituals, and a system for constant evaluation and adaptation. We’ll know we’re successful by the ease with which new members participate in information exchange and management.
  7. Different perspectives on the ecosystem are encouraged, tested, and integrated. Our goal is to reintegrate a culture of ecosystem stewardship. We’ll attract preservationists and producers, vegans and hunters, luddites and technologists. We create ecosystems that provide for human need, and we judge production in an ecological context. We teach and demand deeply respectful conduct toward each other and reject dogmatic thinking. We know we are successful by the thought diversity of our membership and the resulting innovation.
  8. Our model is self-replicating. Membership grows, camps overfill, so members find new hosts and build more camps. Our systems, rituals, technologies, strategies and tactics are modular and rapidly deployed in new locations. We know we are successful by observing the cost and time for new camps to become fully functioning.
  9. Leadership is cultivated in each individual. Concentrated leadership is intertwined with concentration of power, control of information, divestment of personal responsibility, and buying stewardship. Each guild-member is a force of creation. Teams emerge based on shared vision and passion. We use clear consent-based social rituals to listen to each individual and delegate responsibility. We know we are successful by the number of different guild members running projects at each camp.
Posted on

The Cast of Characters—Everyone Gets Nourished

Reciprocity is the practice of exchanging things with others for mutual benefit, whereas a gift is a thing given willingly to someone without payment.  Stewardship is a social contract that exists beyond currency. I remember a mentor who once suggested that I should not reject gifts, as it can also be selfish to denying another the pleasures of generosity.  Somewhere in all this gift and exchange and responsibility is a kind of nourishment that comes without financial currency.  Is a nourishment that comes from belonging to a place and to a people that is larger than the self.    This domain of belonging and relationship is what I would like to explore with restoration camping.  Our earth clearly needs us to do this work.  The landscapes that need restorations are the ones we drive by and buy coffee in on the way to our national parks.  Can restoration camping attract people for whom relationship with nature has been sold as the consumption of epic views?

Each person comes to the campfire with different purposes and needs. By understanding these purposes and needs we can arrange for everyone to be nourished by the relationship.  Each may also bring fears to the campfire.  We can tend to each others fears with compassion and without shame.  To design restoration camping we need to deeply understand our community to weave a network of mutual benefit.

In marketing, we profile different “market segments”, and use that knowledge to make sales.  We must be even more thoughtful in creating a restoration camping system, with attention to building more durable relationships then those of the open market.  I am not convinced that we can restore and tend the land as an entertainment business.  As I speculate about each member of our potential community,  I use the term “steward” to identify people with a deeper relationship with a particular camp or watershed, while “campers” are more likely to come and go.  There is a gradient of responsibility and reward, from steward to camper, that needs to be explored further.

Our Cast of Characters:

  • Landowner Host – some owner or manager of land must be willing to invite a community of nomadic people they barely know to come live on their land and do work.  Their greatest fear is that these strangers will be more trouble then they are worth, or even abuse the offer of hospitality.  Our host however is interested because they are enlivened by a vision of abundance and restoration, but doesn’t have the resources to realize that vision.  Land Trusts struggle to maintain stewardship of their lands.  Private landowners usually know little about streams.  This guild offers a way to achieve a vision, but is asking for something in return.  That reciprocity needs to be clear.  Many conservation landowners only see human residence as a source of injury, and may believe their conservation work depends on removing people from their land, and will need examples of regenerative work.
  • Professional Steward – At the heart of restoration camping are professionals who volunteer to design and lead projects and run recurring programs.  These are likely people with experience, but who are willing to serve and teach with only non-monetary compensation.  They want to see meaningful stewardship over time and want to be respected for their contribution.  Because they value their experience, and see a long term potential, they want to see their investment in a piece of land protected, and want some kind of assurance of a long term relationship with the land.  These individuals are likely to be government professionals or owners of established businesses: scientists, managers, educators, landscapers, and farmers.
  • Watershed Partner – Also vital to the
    In the Scatter Creek Watershed the Center for Natural Lands Management provides leadership in dry prairie restoration and has a skilled staff that can design and lead work, and depends on volunteers.

    camp are individuals whose work in the watershed is so closely aligned with the purposes of the guild, that they can easily play a leadership role in supporting projects as part of their professional work.  Perhaps they do watershed education, regional planning, or restoration project development already, and the camp is a cadre of trained and equipped volunteers–a dream come true for a local team.  These include land trusts, conservation districts, tribes, counties, and NGOs.

  • Camp Steward – Once a camp becomes established, I have imagined that some individual will need to devote their working life to managing a camp: tending reservations and schedules, answering questions, tending camp infrastructure, maintaining relationships.  This steward would likely be young but with diverse experience, and proven reliability.  The camp could serve as a stepping stone into other professional work, or could be a long term commitment.  The camp ultimately needs to give the camp steward a living wage and benefits to attract and retain people.  Annual membership dues are the unique component of the restoration camping system that would stabilize this persons livelihood.  At the start, this function will be provided by professional stewards.
  • Producer Steward – Another group that might be attracted to camp, are people who are able to take a harvest from lands under stewardship, as part of their livelihood.  In many cases, harvest can enrich an ecosystem, or create niches to increase biodiversity.  This might include woodworkers, herbalists, basket makers,  florists, seed collectors, or restoration shops–people for whom an abundant landscape is a source of raw materials.  Part of their work may be the cultivation of collecting grounds, which they would require some assurance on long term tenure.

    Can restoration camps attract people in a world where relationship with nature is sold as a process of consuming epic landscapes?
  • Professional Educator – Among the professionals involved in the camp will individuals who make a living by teaching skills.  These folks need to sustain themselves by finding students who pay for knowledge.  The camp can provide a unique venue to run programs, and the guild provides a network for promoting their work.  They are concerned about giving away too much of their labor for free.  They need a reliable system and location that serves their educational goals, and are used to paying for a nightly group camping fee that they incorporate into their program costs.
  • Young Camper – College students in natural sciences and design, and other life-long learners may be attracted to the camp as a place to build knowledge and skills.  They are likely looking for meaningful and organized learning opportunities.  They might hope that camp work leads to employment or mentorship, or at least an opportunity to test new skills.  Young campers may want to socialize with other people their age.  There are many young travelers that use systems like WWOOFing or Workaway.
  • Professional Camper – Some professionals may not want the burdens of the steward, but are looking for enrichment among peers.  They will be disappointed if there is nothing new to be learned, or if camp projects are low quality.  Camping serves as a retreat among peers, and could be a venue for professional groups to meet.  Landowners could benefit from groups that use the camp as a case study for professional development.
  • Recreational Camper – Most people will come restoration camping looking for a social environment for fun and learning.  They will want space and free time, a beautiful location, a body of water, and easy socialization with interesting people.  Overtime they may return in another role.  These may be fishers, hunters, nature lovers, or outdoor fitness enthusiasts.  Recreational campers might come into the guild through a purely commercial doorway, like HipCamp or AirBnB.

    For a restoration camp to be attractive to families there must be areas where children can explore with minimal constraint.
  • Family Campers – This groups deserves special mention, because they have special desires and needs that revolve around their children.  They want a safe and loving environment, preferably with childcare opportunities.  The camp should be reliable, well organized, and not demanding, with activities that suit a range of ages.  Kids want to run free and explore.
  • Landowner Neighbor – As the camp can demonstrate its work, and connects to the local community through social events and watershed assessment work, local landowners may be willing to invite the camp to work on their land.  The camp will need to overcome mistrust by being reliable and open handed.  Through shared stewardship, the neighbor develops a deeper relationship with their land, and can realize goals they cannot reach alone.

Each of these segments of our community is currently out there somewhere in our social landscape.  We need to weave an honest story of how they could belong and be nourished by restoration camping.  The abilities of one group, feed the needs of another.  This interaction is what makes the camp live.

Posted on

Restoration as Craft, Restoration as Industry – The Tortilla Analogy

Ricardo Tabayoyon taught me that the secret of making tortillas is in many small things: the warmth of the water that enlivens the dough, the feel of the ratio of lard to flour, the searing heat in the thermal mass of cast iron. Tortillas are a craft coaxed from fat, water, flour and soda. Most of all there is a rhythm to the baking.

Each plump round ball is formed in preparation; dough is shaped with internal structure, pointed upward, like a fungal puffball or a young mushroom cloud. With the pan hot and everything ready, a ball is pressed into a well-floured disk, dusted off an placed on the rolling board. The rolling pin pushes forward and backward between flips with a quarter rotation. You adjust the rotation and weight on the pin to preserve the circle. If done well, the tortilla goes onto the dry griddle neither sticky nor with flour on the surface to burn and blacken. Pressing the next disk starts when the first tortilla goes on the griddle, and takes just long enough to sear the front and provoke bubbles, around 5 seconds. Then you flip the half-cooked bread. Back to rolling, which takes just long enough to sear the back where the doughy blisters perch on the hot iron, but the inside is moist. The finished tortilla goes under a towel, and the next goes on the heat. Thetemperature of the griddle sets the pace–pressing, flipping, rolling and switching in a seesaw equilibrium. If the temperature is right there is just enough time to contemplate the future and tend the rolling space. Cooking tortillas has the elegance of juggling or jumping rope–a moment of grace where intention and action are perfectly synchronized. Hand-made tortillas are not improved by making them faster or slower.

Our tools define what we think is possible about our craft.

This feeling of craft is what I miss most about my previous work as a landscaper since joining the ecosystem restoration industry. Modern restoration looks like a monkey a chicken and a bull riding a bicycle. Instead of a team in common rhythm, we are divided into strategists, and financiers, and engineers and permit reviewers, neighbors, and bean counters, and land owners all engaged in a staggering jerky dance driven by conflicting stories and institutional conditioning. Considering the coincidence needed to actually build a large project, the vision, the resources, the land; it is proof of grace that restoration happens at all. It is no secret that our progress is slower and more expensive then necessary. Sometimes craft is noticeably lost in the struggle to just get it done.

You could reasonably argue that all collective human endeavors are that way. However I have labored in teams working towards common goals–practical goals that we all value. I have bonded with ditch crews, and laughed with planting crews. This is hard work, which can either be full of clarity and purpose, or disabled by confusion and twisted intentions.

If we wanted restoration of watersheds to be a craft, how would we cultivate our community? What would be the shape of our relationship with the land and seasons? How would we lead and serve and teach and learn? I suspect it will be more like making tortillas.

Tarboo Creek scoured a deep pool under this log jam that frequently holds returning spawners, a source of pride for both the track hoe operator, and the biologist that co-created this feature.

The annual cycle of work is driven by the revolution of the earth around the sun. In-water construction waits for the dry season but gets out of water before the salmon return. Transplanting begins as early as possible after the cyclonic rains return, leaves drop, and plants fall asleep. Everything else builds a pattern around these right moments (called Kairos by the Greeks: the moment when something is possible, as contrasted with Kronos, the inexorable marching of time.) All else is preparation in anticipation of the moment where the dough meets the griddle–the moment of creation.

In an ideal system, we’d spend time living on the land and building community across the project lifecycle. We’d talk through the days work over breakfast. We’d be patient, and do the right work at the right time. We’d design and share new tools. Each project would be an experiment, and we’d take risks together to build our craft.

The secret of craft is not in the contract, or written on paper, but in the people who do the work, and their relationship with each other and their common purpose on the land. Any two grandmothers can bake tortillas together and form a productive pattern. There is no gantt chart, no dispute resolution clause. They are pulled by a combination of experience and service. It is a form of capital that cannot be procured except by time and intention.

Any problems starts out feeling complicated until a system is in place.  Craft is a system in evolution.

I sometimes wonder, how would restoration would look without an Endangered Species Act and a Pacific Coast Salmon Recovery Fund, and a National Estuary Program, and a Clean Water Act, and all our filing cabinets and hard drives full of reports. Would we have build something different from the visions and craft of individuals working in the places they love? Perhaps all that money has enabled people like me to sit here and reflect on both what we’ve done and what we haven’t. Perhaps there would be no restoration movement without dragging ourselves forward with tax dollars, and the self-flagellation of regulation. In truth, it is likely that the legal and legislated tools of the restoration industry provide us a surrogate, for the culture that we don’t have. We study only as required, because we find understanding too expensive. We care more about concepts, than for specific places. Our industrial restoration tools may be ugly crutches for a people that have forgotten how to walk.

I dream of when ecosystem stewardship becomes a craft. I suspect that this will not come from implementation strategies and agency committees. It will be relationships with neighbors and seasonal rhythms that tell us what is too fast and what is too slow. It will be in the details like how the pattern of rolling determines the final shape of the tortilla. A deep knowing of how much is enough, and when further effort would be wasted, because we treasure both the land and our craft. Maybe we will learn to read soil and stream like dough, looking for the right feel.

What I am certain of is that it will take practice. Learning restoration will not happen in a board room, but in the workshop of the earth. I yearn to create such a home for restoration, and to live there. Building relationships with ecosystems is a form of craft that we have only begun to recognize, and we have not paid our dues. If you want to know a place, you need to spend time there. Our ancestors knew landscapes by living in them. It would be wise, if we were to learn this craft, to spend more time in the workshop, sharpening our tools, and sharing our observations.