Greetings! Perhaps you too are noticing the Redwoods beginning to drop their cones, the squirrels gathering the first mature acorns from the Oaks, or the hints of orange on the Maples and Alders. Or you might be enjoying the darkness of night as it arrives earlier and earlier. Indeed, autumn has arrived.
Fall is a potent reminder of transformation. And this season’s newsletter is full of reminders that the world we live in is changing dramatically. We are being asked to live differently amidst fires, viruses, climatic upheaval, animosity, etc.
We learn from observing the natural world around us that renewal rises out of the compost of decay. While the guides of EarthWays are humbled by our experience of the last several months, we are excited to be planning new programs, even if it means being on the land and guiding in new ways. You keep us going and we are grateful you are still here. We hope you are inspired by what this newsletter offers.
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We are excited to welcome Sara Harris back after her extended sabbatical. Sara is one of the founding members of EarthWays and a wise elder carrying much of the institutional memory of the collective. Fully embracing a beginner's mind, she holds in one hand deep experience of how things have been and in the other enthusiasm for finding new ways forward. We are grateful to have her back in the circle.
Sara and her husband Ken exploring the landscape of Ireland.
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2022 Programs coming soon!
This is the season when we are actively creating our new programming calendar for the coming year. Please keep an eye out for our 2022 new programs email to follow.
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Living Earth Book Club
with Sara Harris and Sahara Chaldean
Beginning in January 2022
Gathering once every other month to discuss books by the environmental writers we love who are deeply connected to the earth. In between, we will meet for a day-long out on the land; finding inspiration from each other and from the land.
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We Dream of Land
In our dreaming, we would dearly love access to some private land to bring our people to, for day-long programs, or even occasional overnight programs. While we have access to beautiful public lands many of you know well, it is also true they are getting more crowded. We are hoping to increase our options.
We are great stewards and will leave any lands in excellent and loved condition. We have great insurance and will provide that policy and a certificate of insured for any landowner. Safety is our priority on every level: for the land and the participants. Ideally, we would love shaded and open spaces, some flatter areas accessible for those who cannot do steep hiking, privacy, and who wouldn’t love some water flowing through?
If you have any leads on land that could provide enough room for solo time walking and wandering and a gathering spot for a circle of 6-10 people, we would love to know. It would be our intention that our presence would bless the land as well as be blessed by it. We would be happy to negotiate a manageable usage fee if necessary. This land would be possibly used only a few days a year.
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Love in a Time of Climate Change
by Craig Santos Perez
Recycling Pablo Neruda's Sonnet XVII
I don't love you as if you were rare earth metals,
conflict diamonds, or reserves of crude oil that cause
war. I love you as one loves the most vulnerable
species: urgently, between the habitat and its loss.
I love you as one loves the last seed saved
within a vault, gestating the heritage of our roots,
and thanks to your body, the taste that ripens
from its fruit still lives sweetly on my tongue.
I love you without knowing how or when this world
will end. I love you organically, without pesticides.
I love you like this because we'll only survive
in the nitrogen rich compost of our embrace,
so close that your emissions of carbon are mine,
so close that your sea rises with my heat.
Photo: "Late evening cloud display" by fletche
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All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and the Solutions for the Climate Crisis
Edited by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson & Katherine K. Wilkinson
National Bestseller
Named one of the best books of the year by Smithsonian Institution
There is a renaissance blooming in the climate movement: leadership that is more characteristically feminine and more faithfully feminist, rooted in compassion, connection, creativity, and collaboration. While it’s clear that women and girls are vital voices and agents of change for this planet, they are too often missing from the proverbial table. More than a problem of bias, it’s a dynamic that sets us up for failure. To change everything, we need everyone.
All We Can Save illuminates the expertise and insights of dozens of diverse women leading on climate in the United States—scientists, journalists, farmers, lawyers, teachers, activists, innovators, wonks, and designers, across generations, geographies, and race—and aims to advance a more representative, nuanced, and solution-oriented public conversation on the climate crisis. These women offer a spectrum of ideas and insights for how we can rapidly, radically reshape society.
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California can either make fire part of its cultural identity, or it can watch its heritage go up in smoke
Lenya Quinn-Davidson
August 14, 2021
One recent Sunday, I lay alone by my favorite hometown swimming hole, taking in the familiar sensations of the South Fork Trinity River. The hot sun, the light up-canyon wind, the clicking of grasshoppers, the distant sound of trucks passing by on the rural highway above. I hadn’t returned to this remote spot in years, but it still felt like home.
Beyond the river corridor, though, things were stark and unfamiliar.
Last August, fire dramatically changed this place. Called the August Complex, it was then the largest fire in California’s recorded history, burning more than a million acres of forestland and woodland.
This town, Forest Glen, marked the northern edge of the blaze. It’s one of California’s smallest towns — with only 10 permanent residents. When I drove through it that day, taking in the transformation, my eyes welled with tears over the loss.
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Letters to the Earth ...
is a global participatory campaign.
It began in February 2019 in collaboration with Culture Declares Emergency, when the British public were invited to put pen to paper and write a creative response to the climate and ecological emergency. The invitation was open to interpretation and open to all. Within a month. over 1000 letters poured in from all over the world - from 4-year-olds to great grandparents, artists, scientists, nurses.
A new story began to emerge.
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Love, Love
by Rosemary Wahtola Trommer
If sorrow is how we learn to love,
then let us learn.
Already enough sorrow has been sown
for whole continents to erupt
into astonishing tenderness.
Let us learn. Let compassion grow rampant,
like sunflowers along the highway.
Let each act of kindness replant itself
into acres and acres of widespread devotion.
Let us choose love as if our lives depended on it.
The sorrow is great. Let us learn to love greater-
riotus love, expansive love,
love so rooted, so common
we almost forget
the world could be any other way.
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