#28 Making Voices Heard

A month and a half after CalTrans decided to start cutting down trees in preparation for construction of the Willits Bypass, several actions have prevented them from going forward. Of course, as I’ve noted in earlier blogs, the initial interference with the CalTrans offensive on Little Lake Valley was the presence of a woman calling herself Warbler living on a platform in a tree at the southern end of the Bypass and her supporters’ continuous presence under the tree and providing Warbler with sustenance.

But protesters also called in the Fish and Game Department to call CalTrans on their lack of adequate provision for the migratory birds now nesting in the area, including inadequate biological surveys for the protection of flora and fauna living in the path of the proposed Bypass.

I’m attaching below a fact sheet  distributed by the community group Save Our Little Lake Valley or SOLLV. They are the main organizers of the protest. As I’ve said before, this struggle over to bypass or not to bypass has gone on for twenty years and involves a court case with at least three litigants, including the Willits Environmental Center and the local Farm Bureau that are protesting the impact of the proposed by pass on the wetlands and farmlands of the valley.

I recognize that I don’t have a similar fact sheet for those in favor of the Bypass, such as the amount of pollution created by the slowly moving cars and trucks that are the source of grief, or the amount of jobs purported to be created by the Bypass that local people want (including one guy who told me so when he stopped by the tree sit site while I was there holding a sign—I thanked him for letting me know).

One inarguable fact is that the bypass will essentially be a “great wall” 200 feet wide and 20 feet high, almost six miles with a mile-­long bridge passing through the middle of 2,000 acres of valley farmland,  with 400 acres taken out of agricultural production. This is the largest wetland fill of any project in northern California in over 50 years.

Just driving through the north end of the valley on Sunday afternoon, I stopped to snap this picture of tule elk lounging exactly where the bypass will come through. Hence, this sign at the side of 101 at the southern entrance to Willits begs drivers to think about tolerating the slower pace of moving through Willits so that we can save such wildlife and farmland.

Those protesting the bypass hoped to put an injunction on construction, but the court denied the injunction. An appeal is meant to be heard in June, but as a CalTrans engineer told us, since the injunction was denied, CalTrans took that as a sign to forge ahead, regardless of whether there will be an ultimate decision against the bypass upon appeal.
The next tactic of the protesters was to prevent damage to the fragile ecosystem of migrating birds where fencing was being installed last week along part of the Bypass route. The fence company was stopped from proceeding by protestors last week, some of whom sat in front of the huge ground moving equipment. Also, SOLLV asked a Fish and Game department agent to come insure that CalTrans was obeying the law with regards to inspecting for bird and frogs eggs where the excavators were digging in. Apparently, CalTrans was out of compliance, and so work was stopped on that account as well.
I was present last Wednesday at yet another show down with the police. Officer Epperson provided a positive example of an officer of the law trying to work with the protesters. He said that his job entailed defending the law, and that included defending the laws that we as protestors were defending. He indicated that we were all trespassing on state property, so he could arrest us right then and there, but he wanted to hear us out and prevent a lot of misery for everyone. What were we willing to accept? A dedicated protest site, with a porta-potty provided, where we could continue to voice our dissent while watching the construction go up before us?

That offer was, naturally, not accepted—it was actually received with laughter. One of the most vocal and omnipresent leaders of SOLLV, Sara Grusky, whipped out her analysis of how CalTrans is currently violating the law by not following the regulations of the environmental policies set by the state, and suggested that they be arrested for trespassing with their heavy equipment.

Another negotiating chip in favor of the protestors was that our state representative, Noreen Evans, had written a letter of protest on behalf of the many Willits and other constituents who had signed petitions and called her with concerns about the negative impacts of the proposed Bypass. The SOLLV protestors at the fence site said that it would be valuable to hear what our state representative suggests for resolving the impasse.

After two hours of negotiations, the officers convinced the fence company to pack up, and the protestors had a moment of cheer for our efforts. However, we were also sobered by knowing that the fence company is a local organization that has a huge contract with CalTrans, so by preventing them from working, we were costing them their livelihood. These ethical questions are deeply implicated in every aspect of this protest in ways too numerous to describe in this post alone.

In fact, such decisions are always difficult when trying to balance our daily lives against the demands of any protest against a behemoth, as anyone knows who has committed to such an action—whether walking miles to work for over a year to protest a society bent on making you a second-class citizen at the back of the bus; or going to jail in opposition to a war started on implausible criteria; or railing against a corporation whose production creates environmental hazards to which the rest of society is blind—even at the cost of alienating valued neighbors and friends; or living in a tree for weeks, if not months on end, when the wind and rain blows, and hot meals and close contact with loved ones are rare.

 

So when does one decide to throw off job and social connections in favor of a battle in which the few are confronting the mighty? How do we know if we did enough? And how do we know absolutely what is the right thing to do?

 

As I struggle with these questions, I am happy to receive your own comments on dealing with this particular battle of the Bypass or similar battles that pit so many people against one another in harsh ways.

 

Here is some of the information from the SOLLV group below, as well as in an attached PDF:

 

Willits Bypass Fact Sheet compiled by David Partch

Congestion Relief?
*The Bypass will divert only 20-30% of traffic, including trucks. It will not eliminate stop and go traffic for at least 70% of the remaining traffic and will eliminate only a small part of congestion.

*An alternative solution could divert almost all truck traffic off of Main St. and virtually eliminate stop and go traffic entirely.

*The projected future increase in traffic along the 101 corridor (used by Caltrans to justify the Bypass) has not been realized since predicted. Instead there has even been a slight decline. There are also reasons to believe this trend will continue.

* The congestion at the Hwy 20 turn off was introduced ~20 years ago, when Caltrans re-striped the northbound approach to a single lane, eliminating a critical right-turn capability. The backup started the very next day. This has greatly contributed to the perception that we need a Bypass to solve the problem – a problem that was artificially created with poor traffic engineering.

*A proposal at the Willits City Council to resolve our traffic problems with an alternative route through town by connecting Railroad Ave. to Baechtel Ave. was discouraged by MCOG Executive Direct, Phil Dow, with the argument that alleviating the backup would reduce local support for a Bypass.

*All Hwy 20 traffic (including trucks) will continue to use Main St. since there is no central connectivity with the Bypass (and there are no future plans for it either).

*The southern interchange is designed to require Willits traffic coming from the South to exit the freeway on the right, stop at the end of the off-ramp and then turn left to proceed into town. This will inevitably create a new bottleneck and inconvenience for drivers coming into Willits.

*The northern interchange will create similar unnecessary inconveniences for vehicles coming in and out of Willits only to go from one 2-lane road right back to another.

Local Economic Impacts

 

*14-26 (out of 118) Willits businesses will fail due to the Bypass. In addition, any remaining businesses will suffer at least a 10% loss of revenue. This will mean a significant loss of sales tax revenues.

* The southern interchange of the Bypass has been designed to accommodate a freeway-style business section (gas stations, restaurants, motels) outside of the city limits which could further erode business in Willits and the city’s sales tax revenues.

*90% of local business owners/managers on Main St. have signed a petition voicing their opposition to the Bypass in its current design.

*Caltrans has already started to retreat from their assurances to ranchers (some forced to sell their lands into the Mitigation Trust) that they would be able to lease back their lands for grazing. This could have a considerable negative impact on the local production of meat products.

*No funding is allocated (thru relinquishment or otherwise) to make necessary and desirable enhancements to Main St. in conjunction with the Bypass project. The relinquishment offered to the city is only enough to cover the cost of bringing sidewalks into ADA compliance (something that should have happened years ago at Caltrans expense anyway, since they own the road).

*The relinquishment funds include nothing for future maintenance costs that will be incurred by the City of Willits after the relinquishment.

*The Bypass together with its Mitigation Plan requires the purchase of ~2000 acres of farmland. Much of this will be taken out of production. All of it will be removed from the county tax base.

*Through MCOG the entire county has committed >31 million of its own STIP funds (State Transportation Improvement Program) to the Bypass, virtually eliminating years of funding that would have been better spent on other local transportation improvement projects (including, among other things, money for public transportation and bike/pedestrian trails.

Construction Impacts

* Piles must be driven as deep as 100 feet into the ground to build the viaduct section of the bypass (>1 mile in length). 1,600 piles are needed. Each pile will require up to 2,210 strikes at decibel levels of 187 – 220. (For comparison a jet taking off is 140 decibels.) Because the noise from pile driving will kill the fish in near-by streams, Caltrans has been required to hunt down and find the fish and temporarily relocate them. This noisy pile driving will go on for three years from 7am – 7pm. And this is just for half of the proposed 4-lane bypass.

*A conservative estimate of 95,000 tons of CO2 per year of construction will be dumped into the atmosphere. That is a total of at least 380,000 tons over the construction period (probably a lot more). Caltrans claims that the Bypass will reduce CO2 emissions because it will reduce stop and go traffic. However, it will take 70-80 years for their calculated emissions savings to compensate for the construction impact. And that does not take emissions due to future Bypass maintenance into account. It also ignores the fact that alternative solutions could greatly reduce stop and go traffic for

all of the vehicles passing through Willits – not just the 20-30% that would utilize the Bypass.

*The construction of the bypass (Phase 1 only) will require 1,400,000 cubic yds of fill. This will require 140,000 dump truck loads or an average of 22 loads/per hour over the construction period (200 days/yr X 4 yrs X 8 hrs/day). Many of these trucks will inevitably need to pass through town (and Caltrans has repeatedly refused to make any promises to the contrary, claiming they cannot impose rules on the contractors).

*Construction will require the use of haul roads through wetlands that that supposedly will be restored. Caltrans has offered no explanation or plans for how these wetlands will be de-compacted and "restored" after completion of the Bypass (the possible success of which is highly controversial).

*Placing huge amounts of fill dirt on top of wetlands will require that the ground below will need to be drained and collapsed (intentionally compacted) by the insertion of 55,000 wick drains. This will form an underground dam across the flood plane with unpredictable underground hydrological effects.

*The process of placing the fill dirt itself will require the use of huge (and unspecified) amounts of water. Where this water will come from is unclear. Probably it will come from wells on the surrounding Mitigation lands – either existing or new. This excessive extraction of water would have a dramatic impact on the groundwater level and, therefore, all the other wells in the valley.

*No monitoring plan has been set forth for the impact on the water quality of the creeks that the haul roads will have to cross.

Physical Impacts

*Since the Bypass route cuts through the valley bottom, it will all have to be a raised structure (from 10-30 feet above the valley floor). Much of this distance cuts right through a flood plane. The section closest to the city will rise to 30 feet (over the railroad tracks). Part of this will be a viaduct (a bridge-like structure) ~1 mile in length. It will pass over Commercial and East Valley – and our sewer plant. The rest of this section will be a huge dirt wall (2-3 stories in height) that will represent a dam to the flood waters (not to mention a visual abomination).

*This elevated section with greatly increased vehicle speeds will project an intolerable level of noise throughout the valley and up into the surrounding hills (especially from the trucks).

 

Social Considerations

 

*The Bypass has been a deeply divisive issue in our community. There are strong feelings on both sides of the fence. These divisions will continue and possibly even intensify in the coming years, especially as the real consequences of the Bypass become more and more apparent.

* Caltrans has repeatedly and consistently refused to work together with members of our community to resolve disputes – even with people strongly in favor of the Bypass but concerned about certain aspects of the design (like the lack of a Hwy 20 interchange) and much to the exasperation of even those City Council members who favored the bypass. It seems as though very few people in the community are entirely happy with the Bypass as it is being crammed down our throats.

 

 

 

#27 The Warbler in a Tree

             Last week I interviewed Warbler, the woman sitting 60 feet up in a Ponderosa pine tree just off Highway 101 south of Willits. Why did she decide to go live on a platform 4’ by 8’ in the winter? And how is the town of Willits reacting?
            The latter question is driving me to distraction as I begin to investigate the suitability of a gigantic cement Bypass as a response to the problem of traffic and pollution in Willits. With a sign of protest, I stand by the freeway where construction is slated to start. Over the ninety minutes, I counted the responses by passing motorists: 3 out of 4 honked and waved, seemingly showing support of the protest; 1 in 4 gave me a thumbs down, flipped me off, or screamed an obscenity. So while this unscientific survey indicates more support for the protest than support for the Bypass, those enraged by the protest have their perspective, too.
            The issues are long and complex to confront. For over twenty years the Bypass has been under discussion and argument, including in a court case now. I have lots of homework to do to understand all the history, sub- issues and perspectives.
           Essentially, the problem is that Highway 101 just south of Willits becomes a two-lane road and heads through Willits on its Main Street. As a result, all kinds of tourists, huge freight trucks, and local traffic are vying for space for three miles going through Willits. Many of us learn which side streets will get us around the worst of the traffic, but during the commute hours and the season of tourists heading up and down 101, we can spend long minutes of crawling along. Not 45 or 60 minutes, as in Bay Area or Sacramento area traffic that I’m familiar with, but ten or fifteen minutes to get through town on 101.
        The other crucial problem is the by-product of pollution created by the idling cars and trucks which can last longer for hours in the peak tourist season as the slow snake of traffic winds through town. Willits residents are rightfully concerned about having to breathe the fumes day after day, hour after hour.
        So CalTrans and the city Powers-That-Be devised the Bypass. I’ll save for another time the history of the various forms that the proposed Bypass has taken, including alternative routes that seemingly have far less impact on the local environment. Those impacts I’ll also discuss in coming posts.
        But for now, let’s look up this tree and learn about the woman who has captured the hearts and raised the ire of many Willits residents.

“Warbler,” her adopted name for this tree sit, comes from Colorado. Aged 24, she has been in Willits for four years, living on a small farm where she has been milking goats and cultivating organic produce. Last year she became involved in the dispute over the Bypass when she learned how the proposed freeway would destroy the farmland very near where she herself was living and working.

         The Bypass will require the drilling of 55,000 holes 85 feet deep by a couple of feet wide to compact the dirt and pump out, by this force, water in the aquifer of Little Lake Valley. Willits lies in this valley, which is a watershed for the Eel River, collecting water from the surrounding hills and mountains, and sending the water further south. The fear is the extraction of so much water and the impact of the cement viaduct over a few miles through the valley will greatly reduce the natural resource so valuable to local farmers—which is one reason why the Farm Bureau is a party to a court case that sought an injunction against the Bypass.
        Concerned for the agricultural and environmental impacts of the massive structure, Warbler and other activists from the group Save Our Little Lake Valley (SOLLV) sought a way to prevent the imposition of the Bypass. Warbler took the advice of the Cascadia Forest Defenders and decided to take the dire step into a tree top as a way to bring attention to the dire consequences of the Bypass.  “We were running out of options to prevent the Bypass, and CalTrans was ready to start chopping down trees.”
         When I asked her what kind of sacrifice this is for her, Warbler said that she hardly thought it about because she’s used to living simply and she is easily adaptable. “People come every day to help take care of me—bringing food and taking care of my needs.”
        She emphasized that this tree sit is not nearly as romantic as that of Julia Butterfly who sat in a huge redwood tree for over 700 days in order to prevent the chainsaw from taking down that old growth tree and those nearby. Warbler’s tree is much smaller in diameter, and she has fewer options for creating a variety of “living” spaces among its branches than the gigantic redwood tree offered Julia. Worst of all, being only 50 feet from the four-lane highway, she endures constant noise from the traffic. But she is determined to make the best of it.
        I will return with more of the issues that frame the Bypass battle. It involves a common array of players in many social struggles: economic scarcity; the roles of big money, status, and power; the conflict between environmentalists and those seeking to capitalize on natural resources; health concern; battle fatigue; and generous doses of self-righteousness from every side—from those holding up signs to those flipping off the sign holders.
        The huge machine of CalTrans, slated to get $300 million to create the Bypass, is the favored winner of this battle. So why bother sitting in a tree or standing by the road?
        I’m gnawing on that question daily.

#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.

#25 Taking Care of the Forest, the Forest Taking Care of Me

We need the tonic of wildness... We can never have enough of Nature. …

We need to witness our own limits transgressed,

and some life pasturing freely where we never wander.

Thoreau

Writing projects heat up, and visitors stop by my cabin in the coastal redwoods outside Willits, keeping me busy. A friend just pointed out an interesting article in the New York Times, The Busy Trap on the nature of keeping ourselves busy—and telling everyone we are—to convey self-importance or to reject the validity of quiet and slow activities as pastimes, no matter how rejuvenating and necessary they may be. Since I ended my previous post declaring that I’m still a Type-A personality in the woods, I had to reflect on being driven. I do believe that we can keep busy in positive ways when working for the good of our communities and the earth, but rejuvenation is necessary in all living things.

One of the projects that keeps me busy is tending to the forest around me. I have 23 acres of redwood, madrone, fir, and tan oak. Learning how to conserve the forest’s best qualities while minimizing fire hazard is a job in itself. Even as I agree with Thoreau about enjoying the wildness in these woods, the force of human hands long ago impacted how the forest grows and looks now, and the woods need tending.

Debris in the Forest

To get the picture of what forest stewardship can mean, here is a photo(left) of the woods that were cleared of brush and small trees along an old logging road just below the house. You can see individual trees and some logs lying on the ground.  Compare that to a photo below of woods not yet cleared of brush, an indistinguishable mass of leaves. The old adage should be, “You can’t see the forest for the brush.”

Here is another picture (left) of the trail going down to the creek with Cholo ambling along two years ago, in the fall of 2010. You can see he’s in the midst of a chaos of fallen tree trunks and branches. Most of that debris is from tan oak which grows abundantly throughout these woods, but often in small spindly forms. Here is a photo (below) of Sata on the same trail recently. 

A Brief History of This Forest: Slash and Burn

This whole area was logged thoroughly in 1951, with the bigger redwood trees cut down. Walking through the woods you come upon impressive stumps of 4’-5’ in diameter.Then, in 1952, a huge forest fire spread throughout the Sherwood Valley and surrounding hills where I live (you turn off of Sherwood Road to get to my cabin). All the fallen treetops and “slash” from the tree harvesting made for ripe forest kindling after a year. 

The charred remains are visible everywhere in these woods. Apparently the small town of Sherwood burned completely to the ground and never was rebuilt. 

As the embers cooled, new life eventually regenerated in the forest. The fallen trees you see are mostly tan oak, as in this picture (below) 

I was told that the tan oak quickly sprouted after the devastation. However, over the years as the new redwoods took root and stretched high into the sky, the shorter tan oak below them lost their sunlight and grew weak in the shade.  Also, snowfall in the winter—brief but heavy—leaves branches weighed down and soil soggy.  Hence, trees snap off, sometimes in the middle or uprooted entirely, leaving the forest looking like a battlefield, especially in the steep hillsides of the creek bed.

Present Day Fire Danger 

Even as I write this in July 2012, a forest fire has already burned down 25,000 acres of Mendocino National Forest to the northeast of Willits. A thick haze of smoke has spread for miles, including the Little Lake Valley of Willits and its hillsides. The threat of a fire is all too real.

The California Department of Forestry and our local fire departments find every means possible to get the attention of human forest-dwelling creatures to insure that we follow a few basic rules of forest fire prevention: for 100 feet from the house, clear all brush, all branches up to 10’ on the tree, and any trees smaller than a 5” diameter. For homes sitting on a steep slope, like mine, the danger of a flames racing uphill and consuming a property are even worse. So in the winter when I moved here, 2010-11, I started cleaning up the swath of woods just below me, relying on a crew of men to cut and burn. 

Now I can enjoy feeling a little safer, and the forest provides more of a sylvan glade vista rather than a wall of impassable brush.  But the environmental irony is bitter: creating several roaring fires with their particulate matter streaming into the air in order to reduce fire hazard and improve the environment.

I’ve been learning about building brush piles as a means of continuing to clean up forest debris while potentially making homes for critters. Here is another before (left) and after(below)cleaning at the top of the creek on my land that eventually joins Willits Creek far below.

The Earth Manual

Malcolm Margolin, friend, writer, and publisher of Heyday Books for nearly forty years, began his career as a writer after a stint working on replanting forests in the Olympic Peninsula and leading youth on environmental education hikes in the East Bay parks. In his 1975 book The Earth Manual: How to Work on Wild Land Without Taming It, he describes how to build trails for humans and shelters for small forest animals, recycling branches, brush, and leaves. Guiding my work here is Malcolm’s purpose in caring for the wildland: “how to stop its erosion, heal its scars, cure its injured trees, increase its wildlife, restock it with…wildflowers, and otherwise work with (rather than against) the wildness of nature.”

I’ve been trying to follow some of these lessons, though I have much yet to learn. For example, Malcolm warns about creating a trail down hill that will become a water sluice in the winter. Check! 

 You can see how neatly I dug the steps on this part of the trail, and above to the right are pieces of redwood plank and rebar used for steps. But in the last torrential rain of the winter, I discovered too late that I had not created enough of an outslope to allow for water drain off. Well, there’s always time to try again.

Cleaning up a Mile of Trail

As well as the creek bed, the old logging roads from 60 years ago form the basis for many of the trails I’ve been renovating. I’ve even found remnants of the old logging practices, such as this three-inch thick cable used to haul the logs up skid rows through the forest. 

I’ve been creating trails through these acres for the last two years. I always carry clippers and alternately loppers, a saw, a rake or a shovel to clear the path. 

Hauling logs and branches up and down the steep hillsides is tremendous exercise.

  

My puppy Sata is a little mountain goat, racing up and down the hills, bounding over logs, and trying to bite the piles of leaves I throw on top of my brush piles. 

Various work crews of friends have graced the land over the last years. My friend Nomi with her sons Izzy and Micah helped clear the path.  

My friend Keasley and his two sons Elliott and Emerson helped build steps down to the creek head and clear a half a mile of trail.

Katherine likewise made brush piles and then created an Andrew Goldsworthy type artwork of the curved redwood branches falled to the earth. (Goldsworthy’s River and Tides is an inspiration for making art with nature and in nature.) (YouTube shorts) 

Recently my crew of my two nieces and nephew, Julia, Laura and Kyrae, helped clear the trail. 

The work of cleaning up the forests makes me admire ever more the work of the Conservation Corps during the New Deal, which put thousands of Americans to work in our nation’s parks to build roads, trails, bridges, benches, lodges, and many other improvements to our parklands. As I try to make a mile of trails and sylvan vistas, I see how much vision and hard labor made our forested parks such pleasant glades to wander in.

The forest offers opportunities for giving back to the earth, and sustains us in many ways, from Sata’s little swimming hole  to places for delight and meditation. 

#24 Ch-ch-ch-changing

         'Tis done. The changes have wrought a new life. 
                          
       Friends, blogacious and otherwise, have been asking, “What’s happening with your blog?  I want to hear about your life in the hills.”  Well, it’s a long story…

 Said Thoreau (in slightly different terms): "If one advances confidently in the direction of her own dreams, and endeavors to live the life imagined, she will meet with a success unexpected in common hours." 

Two years ago in May, I began advancing rather more fearfully than confidently toward my own dream, but at least I advanced, if only stumbling forward at times.  And I have met with success at last.

 I left what many would consider a dream job and its many benefits (including health benefits), on the tenure track at California State University Sacramento. There I had engaging colleagues and students; the opportunity to help young people in their minds and hearts and thus contribute positively to society in relation to gripping social issues. I had a lovely home, here below in February with the wisteria in bloom, and an amazing neighborhood to live in by the American River (Cholo enjoyed it especially), along with much more for which I was and still am grateful. 

And yet… and yet I was deeply unhappy. I complained ad nauseum about The Papers. Having been first a high school English teacher, then a college composition teacher in whatever class I was teaching (Urban Education, Gender Equity), I had been spent 25 of my 29 years in classrooms taking home piles of papers daily.  Nor was I ever able to give these papers mere cursory attention as I was instructed to do by colleagues concerned about my burn out. After all, many teachers manage to stay in the profession for 35 or 40 years (even if burned out themselves). No, I labored minutely over every essay, giving each 30 minutes to provide feedback on everything from the student’s positive use of language and analysis to teaching comma rules and reasoning on that same page. Many students expressed appreciation for this feedback that they had rarely if ever received before. And so I pushed on—to the breaking point. At 100 or 150/week  x 30 minutes per paper comprised a crushing 50+  hours of work on top of classroom time, office hours, committees, lesson planning and communications.

Until the end this work was usually worth it. My students—at Sac State, but also in other colleges and high schools where I have taught—often taught me about the world through their papers, as well as through our class discussions and antics, through our conversations outside of class. The student who reported in his essay that his brother had killed their father to stop the violence against their mother.  The student who shared that her parents would send her back to India if they knew she was dating a man they had not picked for her marriage. The student who revealed the indignities he had tolerated from fellow students teasing him about being “a fag.”  The student who told me before anyone else about her pregnancy, seeking advice what she should tell her parents.  Oh, so many hundreds of stories!  I cherished the trust put in me, even as the weight of suffering and want revealed burdened me. The lessons in poverty, racism, and sexism and their impacts touched me deeply wherever I taught.

In fact, my need to break away from teaching before breaking down wasn’t just the papers.  I had been carrying the weight of others’ problems and my deeply embedded proposition to resolve those problems from the time I understood my mother’s drinking problem at age 12 and resolved to heal her (i.e. a severe case of codependence, and yes, it can cripple one; see this site: Codependents Anonymous).  A child’s magical thinking became an adult’s rescue mission. 

Surely I have had helped many students, as some former students graciously attest, just as they have influenced my life and remained in it, as these recent photos show: I got to visit Juan at his welcoming party for his new baby, a housewarming for Jennifer (below), and Tanisia (below) who helped fix my hair with her cosmetology skills   for a performance I did (a story for another time) 

What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments but what is woven into the lives of others.   Pericles

But sometimes the teacher needs to learn and the rescuer needs rescuing.

My most supportive colleagues tried to find ways to keep me at the university without my going under, given the ever increasing demands on faculty as the university itself was going under from budget cuts (need I say that our national priorities are screwed up?).  But after four years there (now three years ago, in May 2009), I let my colleagues know I needed to take a leave of absence by May 2010 (such planning ahead at the college level!). I hoped that after a break, I could return, rejuvenated.

However, several months into using my leave to rejuvenate my cabin in the woods as well as myself, a whole new path for my life opened up. Who could not love this sunrise from the back deck? 

Any transition serious enough to alter your definition of self will require not just small adjustments in your way of living and thinking but a full-on metamorphosis. /Martha Beck, O Magazine, Growing Wings, January 2004/

My blog started a year and a half ago, in December 2010, when I had just moved to the cabin and was beginning the renovations, which started with clearing brush on the land and getting plans and permits ready for the actual rebuilding.  The reconstruction projects lasted from April 2011 to October 2011. I was planning to settle down finally for a few quiet months of my new editing, research, and writing work, but then all hell broke loose between my housemates back in Sacramento where I’d been renting rooms. 

Just when you think you’ve got your life into a new groove, a healthy routine, here comes change barreling through. After much deep agonizing about my future, my security, my loyalties, I decided to let go of my job and put my house on the market in favor of risking the more basic conditions of life at the cabin and the unknown potential of work as a writer.

We cannot discover new oceans unless we have the courage to lose sight of the shore: Andre Gide

When I perseverated about these changes, I had no lack of support from many loved ones who knew how desperately I needed to remake my life: A long walk with my brother Stephen on a beach, talking about the right to find happiness even at the expense of letting go of old ways of giving to others. A reminder from my brother Greg that I had been complaining for years, years, about feeling burdened by my work. A loving butt-kicking from my sister-in-law Wendy and a similarly insistent letter from my sister-in-law Phyllis whose philosophy is worth sharing with the world for anyone down-and-out: 

“How about being relentless about re-creating joy in your life in a way that would be beneficial to everyone around you?  How about struggling to find a new way to use your gifts of giving that would restore your optimism, your strength, and replace weariness with wonder, boredom with beauty and brilliance?  You may find that your energy to contribute will not only be restored, but may even multiply.  I realize that walking into the great unknown is scary.  Just know that ‘with great risk, comes great rewards.’  Those rewards are waiting for you to claim them.”  

Phyllis echoes what Norman Vincent Peale said: “Change your thoughts and you change your world.” 

With the final decision to resign from my job and sell my house in Sacramento came whole new pressures to sort and pack up my stuff, make repairs to the house, repaint, and yet again deal with a slew of people to enact this long-term plan, all mostly single-handedly (a shout out to Katherine and Jeff in Sac for all their help and support in this process).  Exhausting! This is why we refuse to change our lives.

All this combustion explains in part why I left the blog behind.  I was dealing with dry rot , too much stuff  garage sales, and open houses.  

Lovely home that it was, in a sweet neighborhood near a good school and open space by the American River, I got an offer on my house the day after it went on the market, an offer far less than I bought the house for, naturally, in this time of the housing market collapse, but that it sold so quickly for a good enough price perhaps also signals some minutely positive change in the economy.  A high school English teacher, her husband, their two dogs, and a baby on the way were the best possible buyers I could have imagined for a home and the nearby river that had given me, my family, friends and lots of kids among us many good memories. 

Once I had most of my belongings relocated to a storage unit in Willits  and I had returned to my cabin on the hill, instead of choosing relative rest after all the commotion of moving, I leaped into yet one more renovation project. Garden below cabin before Garden below cabin after Sonny's work

A back hoe last year had cut a couple of raw terraces into the hillside below the cabin.  Now Johan was installing the irrigation while Sonny was providing the expertise and hard physical labor, as well as laughter, to get the terraces built, turning the rocky cuts into three beautiful terraces. He use the “moonboards” (cuts from redwood trees felled last year to create more sunlight for my solar power system), along with other parts of redwood trees. Sonny got the opportunity to work out a marvellous design while rock music rang out on the hillside and Sata played in the dirt beside him. After a month of Sonny’s hard work and company, money for the garden ran out as my need ran up like a fever for the quiet and solitude I’d been working to create over these last couple of years. Renovation fatigue! But amazing results in the end.         

Wednesday, May 23^rd, was the last day of having folks here helping with renovations on a regular basis. Now, I may spend several quiet hours a day doing some editing work, an hour hiking with Sata and clearing the Creek Trail, enjoying the new lilies, another hour planting deer-resistant lavendar, and wrap up the evening by writing or reading.   I hope to share some further experiences over time about what it’s like to head back to the land, to run away from home in one’s 50s and start over again, to milk goats and get food from a farm that still uses horses, to learn new ways to give back to society without expending one’s one vital energies over and over again. A friend asked me if living here is relaxing. I reply to such questions that you can take the woman out of the city, but not the city out of the woman quite so easily.  I’m still a Type A personality, but I do have trees to temper my busy-ness.

I close with a couple of lines from a wonderful poem called "Pruning" by Erica Funkhouser in this season of spring:

After a point, one sees/what one's life is going to be,/what one really knew all along.
Grace requires adaptation/to circumstance,/learning to work with one's nature…