Frogs And Salmon Berries Finding a Way Forward

This week we decorated our building with some fun homemade Halloween decorations. Last week we took a tour of the pop-up Halloween store and didn't find the lights we wanted. Also, we don't have the budget to buy premade decorations we had in mind. We want a Hollywood set sized display. All we could see for sale were window or office cubical sized strings of lights. At the same time, we watched a documentary about the money saving props they used on Star Trek, like they used lights pointing down one week and as up lights the next episode. They cut up and spray-painted bubble wrap to look like belt buckles. That was my favorite. We decided it was ok to put our own spin on thrifty. Mark strung up our white Xmas lights early in support of our home-made decorations. He made a Scarecrow with my overalls all held up by a rake. It scares the neighbor's dog so I think it's solid. I found some tent poles on the curb that I combined with tennis balls and draped with white rags I use to clean graffiti to create garden ghosts. It inspired our neighbors into decorating their doors and windows as well. It all works to cast a ghoulish green glow in our shared courtyard. Marthy Stewart would smoke some weed and say, "it's a good thing."

What I read this week.

Braiding Sweetgrass | Robin Wall Kimmerer

The book I read this week gave me the perspective of a biologist who is also a native American. I found it heartwarming to hear her perspective. This book sent me back to my childhood camping in the North Cascades. My father was a huge fan of family camping in the darkest wettest woods an hour's drive outside of Seattle. We played in the river, saw green frogs, and ate salmon berries. It never occurred to me to think of the trees, frogs, river, fish as people too.

It’s a book about ecology, habitat science, and the profound insights of native American cultural identity. It’s a long story to tell, it took a bit of patience to stick out the whole book. I found myself relaxing as Robin describes her life as a mother and scientist. She gets along with everyone in her town making maple syrup. She puts up with the men who run the schools where she works. Men can be short sighted, and stupid. I love her world view that is about our place in the world. It's a magical place where more than just humans are considered people.

I was a kid when ecology became a movement. In the Boy Scouts, I worked on projects to restore the natural environment. I helped restore habitats in wetlands and made trails safe in watershed environments. As an adult, I had the chance to restore the kelp forest habitat in Santa Monica Bay. You would think it would be rewarding to take part in projects to save the environment, but it is a disheartening endeavor. The more we learn about how much faster natural systems are failing, it makes our efforts seem pointless. So, I appreciate how Robin responds to this feeling of hopelessness as she describes the malfunctioning society that created a superfund site near her home It is so badly polluted that there seems to be no hope of recovery. Robin concedes it is bad. She shares a prophecy that says there is a way forward if we make room for the natural world to work with us.