#26 Thinking Urbanly, Acting Locally

A woman sits in a Ponderosa pine tree on a hilltop overlooking the loud freeway of 101. Warbler, she calls herself. She is perched on a slight wooden frame, perhaps 50 feet up, there to protest the looming devastation that will be the Willits Bypass if CalTrans gets its way (and the way of those Willits residents who have been convinced that the Bypass is useful or who simply don’t know or don’t care).

I’ve been one of the residents who didn’t know what the implications of the Bypass are for the Little Lake Valley and its watershed. For twenty years, various local organizations have contested the Bypas. The case against CalTrans is now in court, to be heard in June of this year.
 






However, construction suddenly threatened to start at the end of January, including the topping of these humongous oak trees down to 40 feet, before bird nesting might start in February. That was when Warbler climbed the tree.

And that was when this forest woman, yours truly, decided to get back in gear, not only with this blog but with connection to local life in the community down the mountain. The Urban Mountain Woman is back!

Since last July, I’ve been busy working as an editor on book projects, traveling to the Bay Area often and even to Southern California and Arizona both for work-related interviews and to connect with elders, family, and friends.

 I’ve also been settling into my many routines on the mountain: ashes in, wood out for the woodstove; water in for the solar batteries (see Blog #22 “Solar Powered”), pee bucket rinsed out from the composting toilet (see Blog #21 “Not for the Squeamish”); light the candle to type out this missive since the sun was blocked by fog today. I’ve found wonderfully epiphanal moments in which I’ve been able to disconnect from the larger world and focus on the immediate world around me, something I haven’t done much of in years, if ever. Hiking these here hills and creating new trails out of old lumber roads have provided much needed respite (see Blog #25 “Taking Care of the Forest, The Forest Taking of Care Me”).

 As I told a friend the other day, after tending to the gardens of students before me day after day for so many years, I’ve needed to tend to the forest before me, and here find some rejuvenation. As Voltaire wrote in Candide, after the hero’s journeys and misadventures far and wide, in the end, “we must cultivate our garden.”

Then what? Rabbi Hillel asked the questions that make us seek a balanced approach to giving and taking:
          If I am not for myself, who will be for me.
          If I am only for myself, what am I?
          If not now, when?
Some of us make the betterment of society a way of life—whether it be choosing to work in schools, clinics, or social support agencies, or volunteering to clean up beaches, or becoming a civil servant. That way of life can be fulfilling, yet it may also become draining. Knowing when to take a break from the pressures that consume us (if we can, and if we can convince ourselves that we can) is vital. I shared in my blog post (#24) called “Ch-ch-ch-changing” my own struggle with giving and doing too much over nearly three decades. Hence, I followed the call to build trails in the forest rather than assign yet more homework in classrooms.

Once rejuvenated, finding a way to re-enter the fray when ready is also vital. As an urban teacher all these years with a conscience for social justice, my contributions to the “betterment of society” have focused on what I could do in classrooms that would help students coming from often disenfranchised backgrounds to feel that they had the support they needed to achieve a college education and a better life, as a result. Here I am in the woods. Now what?

Now I heed the voices that have accompanied me since the movements of the 1960s took root in the 1970s and truly blossomed in the 1980s, reduced to one apt bumper sticker slogan: Think globally, act locally.

A Voice From the Tree
Warbler’s life in the tree has moved me greatly, her spare life on a mere piece of plywood. And so many other local voices that are rising in unison against this Bypass. The voices of the local Pomo Band of Native Californians who protest the uprooting of grasses that supply their baskets, not to mention the further desecration of their homeland. The voices of ranchers and farmers whose land was taken by eminent domain with no heed for the needs they have to keep their businesses viable. The voices of local activists who pointed out the stupidity of the state plan in relation to actual traffic implications examined in expensive studies. The voices of environmentalists raising the alarm about the impact of 55,000 drill holes 3 feet wide and 85 feet deep on what has been a vital part of the Pacific migratory bird flyway. After all, it isn’t called Little Lake Valley for nothing!

These are the voices I will now start listening to more ardently, all the while examining how this state agency has been able to have its way, who decides what is best for a community, and how this struggle between cement and cars, on the one hand, versus just one hundred voices lifting up might become a force of life and light in this valley.






If it just takes one tree sitter to rile us to action, who knows? Stay tuned. I interviewed Warbler and will share what the Pomo say, as well as the many other voices now speaking out.