This week, in three days, I planted 300 trees, a hundred cedar, 200 Sitka spruce. Every morning it was bright and cold, about 34 degrees. Frost was on the ground. One time a bald eagle greeted me with some wonderful overhead circling. Quiet reigned on the little hillock I was planting at the edges, to create a windbreak for a new home, and to suppress and insidious invasive species that threatens total dominion of the area unless tall trees throw shade and kill it with the darkness. But that’s 40 years from now. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you think about it, tree planting is\nabout the only thing Americans attempt at improving the chances of\nthe planet’s survival. Certainly our education system isn’t doing\nthat. High tech is the antithesis of tree planting. So is\nconsumerism. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I did say that quiet reigned over the\nplanting, that is until later in the morning when I heard the toots,\nwhistles and chainsaws from a nearby clearcut. They were murdering. I\nwas giving life. That’s a powerful thing to consider and I let it\nimbue my work. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was such good and rewarding effort,\nalthough it also kicked my ass. I labored largely alone, with my mind\nengaged with anything that happened to slip inside, such as past\nloves, recent traumas, obscure rock songs (\u201cCadillac Ranch\u201d) and\nmy ten years (98-08) of service as caretaker of the Nestucca Bay\nNational Wildlife Refuge. (The photo is of Sonny the husky on the\nrefuge.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During my time there, I planted around\n3000 trees myself to restore a wrecked piece of land and also oversaw\nthe planting of another 10,000 trees on the refuge and other parts of\nthe watershed. As a result, I became a master tree planter and taught\nmany others the skill. It was probably the best teaching I ever did:\ninmates, students, senior citizens, tourists, teachers and many other\ngroups. Perhaps the best times of my adult life were planting on that\nrefuge with my dogs. Some of those trees are pushing 80 feet. I know\nevery one of them \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now, 12 years later I was in a\ndifferent clobbered watershed and it didn’t take much time for the\ntree planting technique I’d honed so many years before to return,\nalong with the muscle memory and hearty rushes of spirit of doing\nsomething as simple and beautiful and important as planting a tree.\nIf you plant a tree well, it will make it. On the Oregon Coast, it\nmight live to 200-400 years and will surely outlast the United States\nof America. \n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This week, in three days, I planted 300 trees, a hundred cedar, 200 Sitka spruce. Every morning it was bright and cold, about 34 degrees. Frost was on the ground. One time a bald eagle greeted me with some wonderful overhead circling. Quiet reigned on the little hillock I was planting at the edges, to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5825,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5824"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5824\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5827,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5824\/revisions\/5827"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}