Jon R. Luoma
foreword by Jerry Franklin
© 1999, Jon R. Luoma
Oregon State University Press, Corvallis, 2006

The Hidden Forest, originally published in 1999, shows that everything we thought we knew about forests – how they grow, how they could be best managed for wood, how they work, etc. – is wrong. Although much of what is discussed here has become common knowledge since 1999, none of it would have become common knowledge without the Andrews Forest Long-Term Ecological Research Station in the Andrews Forest, OR. Beginning as a small venture with a brief flash of opportunistic funding from the International Biological Program, the research station has grown to produce numerous studies that shook forestry to its very basis.

It was a literal case of being unable to see the forest for the trees. The trees that produce our wood – yes, we see them and harvest them. The forest – that is, the web of life at the roots and canopies of the trees – happens at timescales that some ecologists call “the invisible present” – that is, within our lifespans, but long enough that the changes can only be shown by collecting data carefully for decades. The other end of the scale is the brief lives of the almost-invisible mites that live on the needles and in the roots.

These long-term processes require long term research. How does the warming planet affect budding of plants in the spring? How does that interact with the lifecycles of over-wintering insects and migratory birds? To answer these questions – even to propose them in an answerable form – you need decades of observation. This goes against the grain of the short-term focus of most research, the three to five year grant cycles (if that long), and the demand for publishable results.

And yet, even in the relatively short time the Andrews research base has existed, it’s completely changed the way forestry is practiced. Not just the maintenance of national lands, but the corporate-owned lands as well.

The story here is not just the patient research: the political struggles, particularly around the spotted owl, have their share of cliffhangers, false hopes, and final resolutions. And if the “once in a lifetime” storm shows up on your watch, then by gum you get out in it.

The story here is also the evolution of techniques, using canopy cranes to explore the canopy (and discover the importance of Lobaria oregana, a nitrogen-fixing moss that lives in the canopies. And the development of remote sensing techniques using LIDAR (laser interferometry) and GIS (Geographic Information Systems) to gather data about otherwise nearly-inaccessible locations without having to build roads.

And the story is also one of the great, continuing stories of science, whatever branch or method it follows: The stories of people being intensely curious about something, and trying to learn as much about is as they possibly can – as excited by their ignorance as what they know, because the ignorance gives them opportunities to learn more.

All in all, this was a great book to read. I’d like to see a follow up. How did the Andrews research base survive the Bush years? How is it doing today? What new has it learned? This kind of long-term research is needed not only for commercial forestry, but for restoration and conservation as well.

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Welcome summer to North Beach Park Saturday, June 22. We’ll concentrate on building ivy platforms to prepare for the EarthCorps work party in July. If enough people show up, we’ll send an expeditionary force into the park to do a survival ring or two. But come see the park in its summer splendor. It’s like a jungle!

Here are the usual details:

Saturday, June 22, 9 a.m. to noon
Meet at the main entrance to the park, NW 90th St. and 24th Ave. N. Parking is available east of 24th on 90th. Wear weather-appropriate layers that can get dirty and mud boots. We’ll provide tools, gloves, and guidance. Bring snacks and water if you need them. North Beach Park has no facilities. All ages welcome, but children must be kept under supervision of their parent or guardian.

And to help your plans, here are the known dates we’ll be working in the ravine for the rest of the summer:

Saturday, July 13 — EarthCorps returns for the 2nd of four big work parties. They bring coffee, snacks, a port-a-potty, and lots of great enthusiasm. They’ll be doing the major ivy pulling this year. The 3rd work party will also concentrate on ivy removal, but the 4th work party will be a planting spectacular in the fall.

Saturday, July 27 — the regular Friends of North Beach Park 4th Saturday work party. We’ll be concentrating on survival rings for trees deep in the park. This could be adventurous! The hours are slightly different, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Saturday, August 24 — Friends of North Beach Park 4th Saturday work party.

We hope to see you one of these days! As an added enticement, it’s several degrees cooler in the ravine. ;>

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The Looming Collapse of Agriculture on the Great Plains

This article looks at some of the changes happening in the Great Plains, particularly over and around the Oglalla aquifer. Capital wants to turn the land into wind farms, so that’s what will happen. I think wind farms aren’t as scalable as once thought; a big enough concentration will slow down the wind.

Another possibility talked about in this article is rotational paddocking; moving herds of cows from paddock to paddock, making sure it’s grazed clean, and then allowing it time to regenerate. Helping this is allowing the prairie ecology to return, notably prairie dogs and their predators.

Organic farming is given a very brief over view in the beginning. More time is spend on perennial farming, adapting crop plants to prairie conditions by making them perennial (deeper roots, much less damage to the soil). But perennial crops is a good way to go, and returning the land back to a buffalo commons is good as well. To that end, the Nature Conservancy and other groups are buying large tracts of land, and restoring them to buffalo prairie.

It perplexes me that these farmers can see what’s happened to their land with decades of capital taking it over, and yet they resist government management. Soon enough, the agribusiness monoculture factory farms will be abandoned by capital, and then it will be the government’s business to restore land that is in worse shape than ever.

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I’ve often said that a forest steward works on the time scale of 50 years. If that’s the case, how will what we plant today be affected by climate change?

There’s really no way of knowing for certain. There are plenty of models, and a wide range of outcomes, but there are too many variables and no way get accurate values for them in a reasonable time.

Which leaves us with making plans based on conjecture, whether our plans actively engage climate change or not.

There are four ways a plant could react to climate change. It could disperse, shifting its range toward higher elevations and/or latitudes; “poleward and upward.” The plant could adapt to the new conditions. The plant could persist in microsites that provide refugia, places that mimic optimal conditions so that it can survive. Finally, it can die out, whether locally or through extinction. In any plant community, it’s very likely that all four forces will be acting unequally on different plants, with some plants also affected by the climate change effects on their pollinators, seed dispersers, and predators. Meanwhile, these same changes will be happening to plant communities in different regions, perhaps bringing dispersed plants into stressed communities and providing these interlopers with opportunities to become new weeds.

Dunwiddie et al in “Rethinking Conservation Practice in Light of Climate Change” (Ecological Restoration, Vol. 27, No. 3; 2009) propose three basic practices to help deal with climate change.

The first is component redundancy, as in a plane. That is, creating multiple populations of a community on a landscape scale, such that the odds of survival of that community are increased. I think this is similar to what the Seattle Parks Department is doing with their target forest types for park restoration. Lots of the forest types are similar, with similar ecological functions, providing the component redundancy. The landscape-scale of Seattle uses the patchiness of the park system to avoid homogeneity.

A healthy ecosystem already has a fair amount of component redundancy. You can see this in bloom patterns, for instance. Throughout the spring and summer, in a healthy forest there will always be a variety of shrubs and forbs in bloom. Many of our ecosystems have become too simplified; they need to have component redundancy built back in.

The second is functional redundancy, as in a software program. This is similar to component redundancy, but brings in plants from different regions to co-occupy the same ecological niche. That makes it similar to assisted migration, which is actively moving a species from its home range, where it’s becoming stressed, to a new range, where it might do better.

When I first heard about assisted migration, its novelty was very appealing. However, as I’ve thought and read more about it, I’ve come to think that it will have a very narrow range of effectiveness. That is, it will only work for species that are appealing to people. We might look at a tree, for instance, and think, let’s move it north. But the tree that we see is the smallest component of the forest. To really move a tree north, we’d also have to bring with it its canopy and root ecologies, which we keep finding are increasingly complex.

The third is increased connectivity, which is the benefit of any network, or, say, large chain-store system. Increased connectivity is being actively explored on many levels; wildlife crossings over (or under) highways is one. Another is looking to create corridors of conserved lands connecting larger areas to provide migration routes or possible pathways for an animal to move. For instance, connecting two national forests with abandoned farmlands restored to provide habitat. Increased connectivity works better the lower you are in elevation. However, there are numbers of montane species that are being pushed up and up until they’re running out of room. They may reach a place where the temperatures are more compatible than at lower elevations, but they’ve also reached a much shorter growing season than their life cycle is timed for.

How do component redundancy, functional redundancy, and increased connectivity apply to a small neighborhood ravine?

The Seattle Parks Department is encouraging its forest stewards to adopt target forest types. These forest types are based on research into plant communities in areas of little or no Euro-American disturbance.

In directing our restoration efforts along the target forest types arc, we’re building up component redundancy in the overall parks system. Increased connectivity also comes into play. North Beach Park is one of several ravines located north of Golden Gardens and south of Carkeek Park – “between” them, as I frequently describe it. If North Beach were restored to greater functionality, it might provide a stopover place for birds between the two larger parks. Functional redundancy also comes into play, as the plantings in North Beach Park will resemble the plantings in Carkeek and Golden Gardens. But they’ll be different enough that they won’t be patches of a monoculture.

One important thing that North Beach Park can offer is a refuge, a microclimate that remains suitable for some plant and animal species that could not survive outside. It’s noticeably cooler in the ravine, even on a hot afternoon. And as we restore the canopy (we have increasing gaps from falling alder trees), it will stay coolers. Seattle has lots of undeveloped ravines, mostly underutilized private property. These could be restored to healthy forests, and I think would provide a good buffer against some species loss in the face of climate change.

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Thanks to the generosity of our donors, Friends of North Beach Park raised nearly $200 during GiveBIG on May 16th. This was very successful, considering our modest efforts.

A portion of these proceeds will be matched by the Seattle Foundation, for which we are also thankful.

The money raised will enable us to buy youth gloves and monitoring equipment, both of which will help us continue to restore North Beach Park.

You don’t need to wait for GiveBIG, though. You can make a donation to Friends of North Beach Park at any time, by following this link, and selecting “Friends of North Beach Park” from the Donation Designation drop-down list.

Monetary support will help us continue the work to help the forest, help the sound, and help the future.

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Today, join Friends of North Beach Park, and friends of parks all over Seattle, as we give BIG. The Seattle Foundation will match online donations made to member organizations. The Seattle Parks Foundation, our fiscal sponsor, is in that group.

If you give $20, that is $10/year for the first two years, and it will become $10/year for the next two years as well.

To GiveBIG for North Beach Park, go to the Seattle Foundation website:

1. Click the “Donate Now” button.
2. Select the “Make a credit card donation” option.
3. Fill out the donation form.
4. Here’s the important part: In the comments field enter “Friends of North Beach Park.”
5. Click “submit” and you’re done!

Your donation to The Seattle Parks Foundation is tax deductible. All donations to North Beach Park will go toward purchasing equipment and crew time to continue our volunteer restoration efforts. We’ve gotten a good start, but there’s much work to be done.

Here is a link to the front page of the Seattle Foundation website, so you can investigate a little further.

If you want any further information about our restoration efforts, or have any questions, please don’t hesitate to email me at lukemcguff@yahoo.com.

Thank you for your support and interest in this project.

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Why Your Supermarket Only Sells 5 Kinds of Apples

This is more than just the headline may lead you to believe. The article does touch on industrialized agriculture, but it also talks about breeding apples in the 18th and 19th Centuries, why agrarian biodiversity is a good thing (and how it’s being lost) and much more. Including a handy guide to being on Earth.

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We had 14 volunteers Saturday morning, for a total of 27 volunteer hours. It was an excellent turnout and we had a great time. The first thing we did was finish mulching Knotweed Hill. We’re glad to get that done!

David, Loren, and David deliver mulch while Drexie pulls ivy.

This was the result of all that effort:

Another crew built platforms for the ivy that EarthCorps cleared two weeks ago. I didn’t get pictures of them, unfortunately.

We had enough time left over to do some ivy pulling at the base of the Headwaters Bowl slope. (Yes, this picture looks very similar to the picture of EarthCorps volunteers pulling ivy.)

And we got a lot of trash out of the park — quite a bit more than usual these days.

That’s about half the trash — for some reason, I never took a final picture of the trash pile.

Our next work party is June 22nd, but we will be in the park a few times in May. And there is always Golden Gardens on May 11, and Carkeek STARS on May 18.

If we don’t see you then, we’ll see you in June at North Beach Park.

Flickr has a few more pictures of the work party.

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As we begin our third year of restoration in North Beach Park, it’s nice to get an overview of what we’ve done so far.

But first: Don’t forget the 4th Saturday Work Party, THIS Saturday, April 27th, from 9 a.m. to noon. We’ll meet at the main entrance to the park, 90th St. and 24th Ave. NW. We’ll provide tools, gloves, and guidance; you wear weather-appropriate layers that can get dirty, and bring snacks and water as you need it. Have a question? Email lukemcguff@yahoo.com or leave it in a comment here.

Now back to the statistics. If anything, these numbers are low — I know I’ve sometimes skipped reporting some work I’ve done, and that sometimes planting parties don’t quite count accurately.

 
Work Parties

First work party (photo by Drexie Malone).

Since we began, we’ve had 53 “work log events” — which includes school groups, work parties, and the days when a couple of the forest stewards got together to hang out. This accounts for 379 adults and 165 youth, for a total of 1276 hours. And let’s not forget the 16 paid staff, for 48 hours — they do work that volunteers can’t, such as clearing fallen logs and removing woody invasives.

 
Plants of all kinds

Wetland trees and shrubs

We’ve planted more than 322 trees (conifer and deciduous), 189 shrubs, and 125 herbaceous plants; in many cases, these were native plants reintroduced to the forest. We’ve greatly increased the diversity of native plants, while we’ve been DEcreasing the diversity of the invasives. The first planting party was March, 2012. That’s pretty late in the planting season, but we had a long, cool, wet spring that year, which gave the plants plenty of time to establish before the long drought later that summer. This meant we had a pretty good establishment rate — lots of those plants are rebudding quite prettily.

 
Survival Rings

Successful Ivy Rings

One statistic that doesn’t show up in the report is the number of survival rings we’ve put around trees that are being choked by ivy. A “survival ring” involves cutting through the ivy roots at about four feet off the ground. The roots above the cut are left in place; they’ll die. The roots below the cut are pulled back off the tree, and pulled up from the ground as much as possible. If it’s feasible, a 6′ ring is cleared (and then mulched) around the tree. The Ivy Ring Crew has removed ivy from more than 50 trees. This is sometimes quite an arduous process; it’s the hardest physical job we do in the park — other than hauling out large trash items.

 
Trash

Rite of Passge

This is my favorite picture of a trash pile. No, the kids aren’t trash. They’re an 8th grade class from a University District alternative middle school. This was the largest single trash pile we got out of the park, and it includes tires, wheels, shopping carts, bags of cans’n'bottles, and more. It was large enough for more than 20 8th graders to pose on, after all. Other notable finds have included water heaters and oil tanks, a vacuum cleaner, a washing machine body, a couch, a playhouse for dolls, and tires. Lots of tires. In a more densely populated area of the city, the trash would have been much higher.

The amount of trash that comes out of the park on an average work party is visibly decreasing. We used to send groups into the park just to get trash; nowadays we might not find anything.

All this is just “a good start.” There are still many trees with ivy growing up into their crowns, still lots of blackberry, still plenty of areas of the park we haven’t gotten to — and might not for a few years.

The work is great fun, and we hope you can join us. It’s physically demanding and psychologically rewarding. Plus, shared work is a great way to meet people. If you can’t make it to North Beach Park, go to Green Seattle Partnership’s website and find an event near you.

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Last Saturday (April 13), EarthCorps joined Friends of North Beach Park for what was the first of four work parties that will happen in 2013. It was a great start to our third year of restoration.

EarthCorps brings in a crew, supplies, tools, and experience. Lots of groups looking to do community service go to their website, so their events usually have good turnout. We had about 50 volunteers, making this twice as big as the next-largest work party that North Beach Park has ever hosted.

Here’s the crew (left to right): Jessa (Philippines), Masha (Russia), Alex, Ethan, and me (USA).

(Note: The time stamps on the photos are wrong — didn’t notice until looking at these I’d forgotten to change to PDT. Onward!)

The official start of the work party is 10 a.m., but for the EarthCorps crew it’s a lot earlier. Their day starts about 7, loading the trucks and vans at EarthCorps headquarters. (For an event in rural King County, they’d probably start even earlier.) They were on site at North Beach Park and had done a good bit of unloading by the time I showed up at 8:45.

The plan for the morning was that one group would transport mulch down into the park, staging it for a bucket brigade in the afternoon. The other crew would do some planting on the slope we would be mulching. Then crews would switch, and transport crew would do some invasive removal and the planting crew would do transport.

Here are the EarthCorps folks inspecting a possible worksite that turned out to be relatively invasive free. Also, as you can see, it would have been crowded working in there. We found another spot.

People started arriving a little before 10, so we were able to get going pretty promptly.

Masha explaining the plans for the day.

The attentive group. It was cold in the morning, but soon enough everyone warmed up.

Jessa gives a planting demonstration. The planting crew planted quite a lot: sword fern and red flowering currant on the hill, sitka spruce and oregon ash in the wetlands.

Ethan leads a group cleaning up the mulch staging site.

And here comes the mulch! Some of it came by bucket, some by wheelbarrow. It was about 450 feet down the trail. Getting it down there was easy, the walk back up the trail was the hard part.

Once all the planting was done, the planting and mulch transport crews switched tasks.

Here’s a sign of success: All those people all over the park, and only a small bucket of trash came out. And one tire. As an example, everything to the right of the blue tarps is a trash pile from two work parties a year ago. That’s what we used to find every time we worked in the park.

Invasive removal crew, at the base of the slope in the Headwaters Bowl. Note: The man in the t-shirt is probably working harder than the people in hoodies and jackets. But we’re not here to judge.

In the afternoon, EVERYONE participated in the bucket brigade. This is exactly what I wanted a large work party for: the slope needed to be mulched, and the best way to do it was with a bucket brigade.

This picture is taken from very near the start of the bucket brigade. The people in the background are at the end, about 200 feet further down the trail.

The slope has been covered in two layers of burlap, and now receives a finishing touch of 6-12″ of wood chip mulch. This will help suppress ivy resurgence and prevent soil erosion.

High fives at the end of the day!

Here’s what the mulched area looks like. Nice! There are about ten trees and several shrubs in there.

I want to thank EarthCorps and everyone who attended the work party for all the great work done. It was truly a pleasure.

Friends of North Beach Park will have our regular 4th Saturday work party on April 27. The next EarthCorps event will be in June or July, but don’t worry, we’ll give you plenty of fore-warning.

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Saturday, April 27th, 9 a.m. to Noon
(details below)

April has been a busy month so far for North Beach Park!

April 7th was the Groundswell NW Annual Meeting. There were two inspirational presentations, by Dawn Hemminger (about the 14th Ave. NW park) and Milenko Matanovic from the Pomegranate Center (http://www.pomegranatecenter.org). Very nice!

On April 13th, we hosted the first of four EarthCorps-sponsored work parties. About 50 volunteers moved several cubic yards of mulch into the park, and then up onto a previously-cleared slope. There was also a great deal of ivy and invasive removal at the bottom of the slope in the Headwaters Bowl. By the time I had a chance to send an announcement email, the event was full! But we’ll have a few more in the upcoming months.

Last but not least, April 17th will see publication of an article about North Beach Park in the Ballard News Tribune. Keep an eye out for it, online and in print!

As we begin our third year of restoration, we’re really beginning to see results. We’ve planted nearly 700 plants, ranging from Douglas-fir to woodland flowers. Lots of trash has come out of the park. We’ve removed lots of ivy and blackberry, and as the ground is uncovered from the ivy, we’re finding out that there are lots of beautiful native plants underneath.

There’s still lots of work to be done, we’re just getting started.

So, join us Saturday, April 27th! Here are the details about the work party:

Meet at the main entrance to the park, 90th St. and 24th Ave. NW.
Wear weather-appropriate layers that can get dirty and MUD BOOTS.
Parking available on 90th st. east of 24th.
We’ll provide tools, gloves, and guidance. Bring water and snacks as you need them.
All ages welcome, children must be kept under supervision of guardian or responsible adult.
This work qualifies for community service credit.
Register online at http://cedar.greencitypartnerships.org/event/gsp/1787/

If you need more information, contact Luke McGuff at lukemcguff@yahoo.com

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Remember a couple weeks ago when nearly everybody on Facebook was using the red equals sign to endorse marriage equality? Here is an article posted to Scientific American blogs looking at that from the angle of prescriptive and descriptive norms.

A prescriptive norm tells you what you should or should not do. Don’t drink and drive. Don’t litter. Pay your taxes. Go to church on Sunday. Don’t steal pebbles from the Petrified National Forest.

A descriptive norm tells you what other people are already doing. That’s when you notice none of your friends smoke tobacco any more (or maybe few ever did). Or the sign, instead of saying “don’t steal pebbles” says “most people leave the pebbles to preserve the natural integrity of the forest.”

This isn’t a joke; in fact, it’s a “classic study” that showed how using descriptive norms has a stronger influence on behavior than prescriptive norms. When the signs said “Don’t steal the pebbles,” thievery increased. When the signs said “Most people leave the pebbles,” thievery plummeted. The blog post lists several other ways that descriptive norms have a greater effect on behavior than prescriptive norms.

But what I want to think about here is the use of prescriptive norms to attempt to influence positive environmental behavior. I think there is entirely too much of it.

The crisis mentality of most environmental exhortations I think actually alienates us from the possibility of anything we do having a positive effect. Sure we can drive less, but when the bus you’re on goes slower than all the single-occupancy cars, the next day you’re in a car. On the other hand, we recycle more because we know our neighbors are. And we know our neighbors are recycling more because we see their bins on the street on pick up day.

This is another way in which I think that the tangibility and immediacy of urban restoration comes into play. When we see people working in the park, we see the effects of their actions; when we join them, we see the effects of ours. And from that action we can make the connection to the rest of the world. Working on a small park will have little or no effect on the world, but it will have an effect on the people who see the work, who participate in it, who share the benefits.

Environmentalism is hampered by its heavy reliance on prescriptive norms. The doom’n'gloom drives people away. This is why I almost never post a link to more bad news here. It’s not that I’m Pollyanna/head in the sand. It’s because I want people to know what other people are doing. And as we see more of what other people are doing, we see more of what we can do.

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One of the attractions of urban restoration to me is the way it breaks down the false dichotomy separating nature and the city. It forces us to connect with nature where we are, immediately. Nature is not something we drive to visit, not something remote photographed for the BBC or PBS, it’s right here. Ungainly, degraded perhaps, but still cracking through the cement, still living.

Thierry Cohen photographs cities and their night sky in a very meticulous fashion. He photographs a city during the day; nine so far, all cities large enough that we can recognize them at a glance — Sao Paulo, Paris, New York, Hong Kong. He then eliminates all signs of human activity, as if we had vanished completely.

He records the exact latitude of his position, the angle and direction of the camera, and then travels to a flat place free of light pollution at the exact same latitude. In the case of Hong Kong, that’s the Western Sahara, a distance of 7,800 miles. For New York City, it was the Black Rock Desert. He photographs the exact same night sky that would be visible over the city, even to the camera angle and direction.

He then carefully superimposes that exact sky over the earlier photograph of the cityscape. I’d have no idea if he used the right sky or not, but his meticulousness pays off, particularly when looking at several images in a row or different shots of the same city. We know the variation in climate and location of the cities, these photographs show us the night sky varies over them as well. Sometimes drastically different skies in the same city, depending on where you’re looking. He even works in the shadows of the cityscape, a detail that if missing would hardly be noticed, but when added is stunning.

There are several lessons I get from these photos. One is the distortions of maps and the world: I would never have guessed that New York and the Black Rock Desert, or Hong Kong and the Western Sahara, were the same latitude.

Another is the awesome majesty of the night sky that we’re missing. I grew up in Chicago, and there was so much light pollution that at best you’d see a few stars; the moon itself, if old or new enough, disappeared in the haze. I was 18 before I saw my first deep sky unscreened by urban light. I thought, if we live on spaceship earth, let’s build a few space canoes. And, if we could see this where we lived, if everyone in the world could see the night sky, there would be no question of directing our energies to going there.

A third lesson is that if humans did vanish magically, the world would abide. It would continue getting warmer for a while, but probably sooner than we think it would start healing itself and cooling off. I find that last reassuring.

I also find the photographs very aesthetically appealing. The oily darkness of the cities, the only color coming from the sky itself. The detail in both sky and cityscape. I could become entranced by these photos, look at them for hours.

Cohen’s photographs show us what we’re missing with light pollution. They provide another way of breaking down the city/nature lie. They show us another connection to the universe.

Links

• Thierry Cohen Photography
• Danziger Gallery
• Smithsonianmag.com, “Collage of Arts and Sciences”: What Major Cities Would Look Like at Night, Minus the Light Pollution
• NYTimes.com, Starry Starry Night

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April is turning out to be a special month in North Beach Park. As well as starting our third year of restoration, there are some interesting events happening. Here is a listing of the events so far.

On Sunday, April 7, join us for the Groundswell NW Annual Meeting at Sunset Hill Community Center, 3003 NW 66th St. The event will be from 6 to 8 p.m., and feature guest speakers such as Pomegranate Center Founder Milenko Matanovic. Also speaking is Groundswell NW board member Dawn Hemminger on “How to Grow a Park.” Representatives of Groundswell NW-sponsored projects (such as North Beach Park!) will be there. Bring treats to share for the potluck.

On Saturday, April 13, join EarthCorps for the first of four sponsored work parties that will happen throughout the year. We’ll be doing a little late-season planting, but also transporting mulch from the entrance down into the park to make it more accessible. EarthCorps events happen from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. EarthCorps provides tools, gloves, guidance, a lot of information, snacks, and great fun. We’ll see you there! To sign up, go to the EarthCorps website and select the North Beach Park event for April 13.

Last but not least, of course, is our regular work party on Saturday, April 27, 9 a.m. to noon. We’re still cooking up details, but it’s sure to be something special.

Spring is a great time to visit the park, with all the leaves budding out and some of the early bloomers showing off their colors. Lots of bird song and bright emerald green.

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Per Square Mile has an apparently simple quiz: given a set of road networks from around the globe, drawn to the same scale, can you tell which are from cities and which are from the countryside? I think I got about half right (unfortunately, I looked up the answers before writing my own down).

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Saturday morning was pretty cold when we started out, about 36F. But once we got going, the work kept us warm.

There were seven volunteers, split into two groups: Doug, Tad, and Jorge worked on removing holly and Drexie, Bill, Morry, and Luke worked on building an ivy platform at the bottom of Knotweed Hill.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get a picture of the first work group, but they cleared quite a large area.

I do have a couple pictures of the ivy platform building:

Here are Drexie, Bill, and Morry (left to right) in the early stages of working on the platform.

Much later — you can see how tall the platform has gotten. There is some trick of perspective here, as I’m on a steep slope above the platform, and Drexie (L) and Bill (R) are slightly below it. On the other hand, we’re not that far apart and they’re standing up.

A final shot of the platform. The platform is under the right-hand branch of the “Y” tree shadow coming up from the bottom center of the photo. It’s at least 5′ tall on the uphill side, taller on the downhill side.

This isn’t very clear, but I just noticed that the Natural Area Crew last month put their initials on one of the stumps from the alders they cut up.

The next official work party will be Saturday, April 27, 9 a.m. to noon. We’ll meet at the main entrance to the park at 90th St. and 24th Ave. NW. Hope to see you there! It’s great work for a spring morning.

Mirrored from Nature Intrudes. Please comment over there.

Groundswell NW invites community leaders and anyone interested in learning how to inspire grassroots change in their community to our 2013 Annual Meeting on Sunday, April 7 from 6 – 8 pm at the Sunset Hill Community Club. Featured speakers include Pomegranate Center founder, Milenko Matanovic, and Dawn Hemminger, East Ballard Community Association leader. All are welcome to attend this free event to learn about community building and how to combine a creative approach with effective grassroots community planning, expansive public participation, hands-on action, and leadership development. This is a wonderful opportunity to exchange ideas and learn about how to inspire change and succeed in making improvements in your neighborhood.

WHAT: Creating Change in Your Community: Groundswell NW’s Annual Meeting
WHEN: Sunday, April 7, 2013, 6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.
WHERE: Sunset Hill Community Club, 3003 NW 66th St, Ballard

Groundswell NW will also present its annual “Local Heroes” awards, which recognize fellow Ballardites’ efforts to create and enhance parks, public spaces, and habitat in our community. This is a free public event. Desserts and refreshments will be available; donations of desserts for the potluck are welcome!

NB: This is from Groundswell’s press release. North Beach Park will have a table there, come up and say hi!

Mirrored from Nature Intrudes. Please comment over there.

Emma Marris

I’ve read this book twice.

The first time, I thought it was going to affect my approach to restoration as deeply as Crow Planet had (which was my first encounter with a critique of the false dichotomy of the urban/nature divide). I even said to myself (rather embarrassing to admit) “How shall we tend the rambunctious garden of this crow planet?” Everything felt like a revelation, this was a manifesto that was going to crumble the walls of the prison and free all within.

The second time, I did get a deeper understanding of the ideas of the book, and why the author presented them.

One important challenge is the idea of the “baseline.” How far back do we reach? The problem of “the baseline” is a difficult one. In North America, it appears easy: first European contact. But “first contact” might be after smallpox had wiped out most of the population; Europeans making first contact were already finding degraded cultures with most of their practices reduced or even lost. First contact might have included some botanic experts, but as often as not, it was fur trappers. If the first attempts at scientifically describing the landscape occurred after fur trapping wiped out the beavers, the hydrology has already been severely disrupted. Between smallpox and beaver extirpation, we have two layers of disruption before our supposed baseline.

Let’s not forget the racist implications of thinking that pre-European contact the Americas existed in a state of nature. Increasing evidence indicates that, in fact, in North America lands were settled soon after glacier retreat and were managed right from the start. One of the habitats that people are putting a lot of effort into restoring, Garry Oak savannah, is completely anthropogenic. The idea that the Americas, before Europeans, were “pristine” and unmanaged excludes the roles that Native Americans and First Nations peoples played in managing the environment.

The baseline for park restoration efforts is 1850. This is after smallpox and beaver extirpation, true; but it’s between botanizing and settlement. It’s a useful fiction because it gives us a target, but it’s not an absolute truth.

Once we realize that the “baseline” is a useful fiction, then we need to think about novel or hybrid ecosystems – that is, ecosystems based on combinations of native and introduced species, or completely new assemblages. What if a tree is a weed in one ecosystem but endangered in its native range? What about plants that have no native range as such? Is there value to the increasing expense of fighting back the increasing list of invasive species?

These are only some of the questions that Marris raises in “Rambunctious Garden.” Each chapter looks at a different aspect of restoration – restoring to a baseline; natives vs. introduced; pristine vs. modified – looking at what people are doing, what the challenges are, how problems might be approached differently.

For my own part, all I can say is “the journey continues.” I’m more interested in getting ivy, blackberry, and other monocultural weeds out than I am in meeting a “baseline” community or replicating an historical example.

Mirrored from Nature Intrudes. Please comment over there.

by Oliver Burkeman

This book is off-topic for this blog, but (a) I wanted to write and think about it and (b) this is where the link to Powell’s lives, so here you are.

As soon as I heard about The Antidote, I figured it would be of interest to me. And I was right. I also thought it would make a nice intellectual pairing with “Bright-Sided: How Positive Thinking Is Undermining America“, and I was right in that regard as well: Burkeman quotes Ehrenreich extensively in his first chapter.

You could say that Bright-Sided outlines the problem: That positive thinking is corrosive, that it places too much value fixating on one emotional state to the expense on all the others, and that it makes circumstance a personal responsibility. Ehrenreich first began her research into the insidiousness of the positive thinking movement when she was diagnosed with breast cancer, and looks at how it affects everything from major illnesses to dieting to business practices.

In that sense, The Antidote outlines some tactics that an individual can take to find, if not the shallow happiness of positive thinking and affirmativism (“Because I’m bright enough, and smart enough, and gosh darn it, people like me!”), at least a deeper peace.

The first chapter outlines some of the problems of false positivism. One of the main problems is that by reciting affirmations, or by striking the word impossible from your vocabulary (as self-help gurus advise), you’re setting yourself up with a “don’t think about the white elephant” type of problem: by stating one thing, you’re also creating the opposite in your head.

Subsequent chapters look at different ways of finding happiness or peace, examining ideas from as far back as the Stoic philosophers and Buddhism, or as contemporary as Eckhard Tolle and the Museum of Failed Products.

The chapters that resonated most with me were “Who’s There? How to Get Over Yourself” and “The Safety Catch: The Hidden Benefits of Insecurity.”

In “Who’s There?” Burkeman looks at what Buddhists call the monkey mind, the “I”; one of the questions he asks is who is it you can’t stand when you say you can’t stand yourself? What is the source of those thoughts constantly running through your mind?

I have a very strong internal narrator; sometimes it’s right at the surface, and I’m talking to myself so deep into imagined conversations I am making gestures. Sometimes it helps me work out a problem, but most often it just takes me away from the moment I’m in. These thoughts are never here now; now is beyond articulation, you can only think about the past or the future.

“The Safety Catch” resonated with me because I’ve only recently appreciated the value of the struggle to learn, the difficulty of not knowing while you attempt to figure something out. I’ve avoided that wherever I’ve encountered it, whether schooling or in art forms such as physical theater or writing science fiction.

And I see now that I’ve used the internal voice as a wall against insecurity, not knowing. The voice wasn’t helping me “plan out the story” as much as it helped me avoid writing. And the voice wasn’t preparing me for various scenarios as much as it walled me off from them when I was in the moment.

The Antidote is a book that can bear thinking about and reconsidering. Burkeman himself has an epilogue chapter looking at how his life has been affected by what he learned while writing this book.

If there are brambles in the path, it is enough to step out of their way.

Mirrored from Nature Intrudes. Please comment over there.