Our Thirst for Life In a Time of Great Caution, by John Allen – Part Three: How We Do It

“To believe that what has not occurred in history will not occur at all, is to argue disbelief in the dignity of man.”  Mahatma Ghandi

In August 2020, after six months of quarantine, Bella and I set out on a road trip with the intention of meeting up with the people behind the growing number of Ecosystems Restoration Camps in California. It turned out to be a road trip through California’s worst fires on record. 

As I sit now, four months later, to recall this part of the story, Congress is being stormed by armed Americans. Our president has openly incited civil violence, displays complete disregard for the Constitution, and is refusing to leave office after losing the election. Meanwhile, we’re moving into the second year of a global pandemic that has suppressed world economies. 

We’ve also elected our first woman of black and Asian American heritage to be our vice president. Climate leaders won in US elections. Fossil fuel divestment is booming. Bitcoin threatens to replace the US dollar. China has restored a desert the size of Belgium to a green paradise complete with rivers and rain. 

Who could have imagined a confluence of such circumstances? These facts make it hard to argue that what has never happened before could not happen. We can no longer look to the past to see what’s ahead. Anything is possible. There is a liberation in that. Let us sink into the possibilities. Let us dream of a more beautiful world, like our lives depend on it. Because they do.

Our time in Montana was a moment of bliss spent with our friends Bill and Tamara. The smoke-free skies met dry grassy plains interrupted by arcs and circles of green under the agricultural irrigation “pivots”. This was all new to me. I’d only ever seen this from an airplane window.  The four of us drove Bill’s mini-Jeep around, fixing broken fence lines, hustling cattle back in. 

We picnicked by a mountain stream in a little spot that was dear to the family, before the fire. I could see they were mourning the loss of their fertile glen. This Bureau of Land Management land where they run their cattle, was scorched by the fires that had swept through two years before. It was just recovering with various weeds and Mullein everywhere. That’s what these pioneer species do—the first plants to arrive on the scene of disturbed soil. Their job is to grow quickly, root deeply, go to seed, and fall over to cover and protect the soil and build up a layer of compost, making way eventually for bigger perennials and trees. We harvested a big bundle of Mullein for the BirdHouse Community Apothecary because of its medicinal benefits in treating flu virus.

I’ve begun to better understand the plight of the ranchers who struggled against the “invasive weeds”, a few of which were toxic to the cattle. It broke my heart to see that the only solution they had was to spray herbicides from airplanes over large swaths of grassland and the blighted forest. The government recommends suppression this way, and neighboring ranchers and farmers keep each other in check, the way social systems do so well. 

I thought all this must explain why there were so few insects and birds.  Although there was no shortage of the big and beautiful bird of prey—the osprey build giant nests of branches that perch at the top of power line poles everywhere. There were also a scary number of grasshoppers that rose up in quantity as you walked through the grass only to crash land six feet ahead, giving the impression of the proverbial locust plague. 

Below the house, the river ran strong and was bordered on all sides by a lush habitat of willow, cottonwood, and grasses too tall to walk through. We spotted a moose in the middle of it all. He wandered there for hours, apparently just enjoying himself. I imagined the return of the beaver and what they could do to bring fertility to the land, eliminate drought, and reduce wildfires.

I won’t tell you about “The Pit”, as the folks of Butte call the still active open-pit copper mine, which is a popular tourist attraction.  It’s a complicated mix of pride and punishment, honored 30 years ago as “the most polluted place on Earth”. It’s also the site of the world’s first superfund, which finally declared they don’t have a solution to remediate the toxins, nor stop them from forever bleeding into the area. It’s a wild story that is illustrated in a radio series called Richest Hill.

On the drive back from Montana, Bella and I wanted to stop again at Camp Hotlum, the 180 acre forest restoration project on the shoulder of the majestic Mount Shasta. The site has survived a third generation of clear cutting. The trees that have grown back are 30 years old now, but the landscape is brittle and dry, even where there is plenty of snow and rain.  

The owners, Jonathan and Lauren have courageously set about to learn and teach the art of restoring the habitat by tending to the soil. Dry fallen deadwood is collected and either mulched or burned to make biochar. They are bringing together state firefighters and the indigenous Modoc in exemplary cooperation to bring traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) to shift the practices, and the mindset from “fighting fire” to “using fire”. 

To get to Hotlum, we crept along the freeway south from Portland through smoke so thick that the visibility limited us to a top speed of 45 mph. The sun was nearly opaqued. We wore N95 masks while driving the van and still kept our breathing short. Smoldering structures and nearby flames lined both sides of the road. The effect was otherworldly.  

The air cleared as we neared Ashland when we called ahead to invite Jonathan, Lauren, Green Man, and John Liu for dinner in town (when that was still a thing we could do). As it turned out they were in the middle of evacuating the camp with everything they could carry. 

To add to the drama, John Liu had left in his own car thinking the others were not far behind. He stopped at the bottom to wait. They weren’t showing, and he’d lost phone contact. Not ready to go back up the mountain over 30 minutes of rough fire roads into the unknown, he waited for two hours while Jonathan and Lauren struggled to get their truck started, then fashioned a metal plate to hook up the fully loaded trailer, while the fires threatened in the distance. So when we all reconnoitered safely in Ashland it was a relief. 

Bella and I found a motel with a kitchen where we made them dinner. We sat in disbelief sipping scotch and warm caviar that Green Man had in his stash. Formerly houseless he now lived and worked at Hotlum. Caviar seemed an unlikely pairing that brought us something to laugh about in the face of it all. 

It was a long drive through California on fire. Bella found alternate routes using an app that identified fires and road closures. In Santa Cruz I met Ellen Farmer. It was at her birthday party so it wasn’t the right time to talk about public banking, something she knows a great deal about.

Ellen and her wife Coleen formed the Cultural Competency Group to better understand and appreciate what it means to be indigenous in this country, and to bring this understanding to the Ecosystem Restoration Camp (ERC) movement. 

The indigenous led meetings, which have gone online during the pandemic, are part of a commitment to educate and decolonize ourselves. When I first heard the term decolonize, I wasn’t sure what it meant or how it applied to myself, or the times we live in. I’m beginning to recognize the many ways in my life I’ve benefited from being white and wealthy, with privileges that came to me at the expense of people who I am now seeking to learn from and emulate. 

The sentiments of colonization trace back to Europeans who described indigenous peoples of Africa, Asia, and the Americas as “savage, wild, and uncivilized.”  With the benediction of Bible stories and the notion of Manifest Destiny, the white (invasive species) set out on a mission to “civilize” the non-white world. 

I have come to appreciate how deeply embedded this sometimes invisible and unconscious notion of superiority drives even our most selfless acts.  By Christianizing the tribes, American missionaries believed they could save souls of the “uncivilized”. By applying a socially accepted, scientifically substantiated approach to ecosystem restoration, am I assuming some sort of benediction in applying my “superior knowledge” for “saving the Earth”?. The parallels are haunting me. 

I look at the modern world with the understanding that a colonizing mindset has been the driving force in shaping it. Most would agree that the result is a catastrophic mess. As a descendant of the colonizers, this causes me to question what I think and do. I seek a more inspiring story that holds Nature as sacred.

I am soothed to know we belong to a collective intelligence. As Charles Eisenstein puts it, “Greta Thunberg and the climate strikers embody a refusal to comply with a system that is anti-life.” [they say] ‘I will not go to school. I will not participate in this. I want no part of the program.’”

Heading further south where the skies were clearing a bit, we stopped in at Camp Coyote, located in the semi-industrial growing fields outside San Jose, California. It was a Mad Max scene of abandoned utility trucks and chain-link fences where the blackened grasses drew a line. Once inside the gates we found the comfort of an allied tribe.

Camp leader, Leo Lauchere showed us around. He looks like the wild lanky boy scout, which he formerly was. He’s promoting the idea of “badges” earned by excelling in regenerative arts such as grey water systems, tree planting, or expertise with the methane biodigester.

The Camp Coyote team is prototyping off-grid systems in a Wild-West style encampment built of shipping containers and recycled redwood fencing, all crafted into structures for living and working. 

The redwood outhouse supplies the biodigestor that produces methane gas for the kitchen stoves where a few members prepared a meal we all shared under the shade canopy stretched between the various camper vehicles and shipping containers. The area is surrounded by gardens fed by the kitchen greywater, and an orchard which thrives on the nutrient rich biodigester effluent.  

Hana Lyon and three or four members are branching out, bit by bit, into the expansive and dilapidated five-acre greenhouse which is on permanent loan from a neighbor. It serves as the nursery that will supply the trees and perennials needed to regenerate the forest and to produce fruits, nuts, and fertility in the region.  

Camp Coyote is founded on the notion that we do not need to participate in the destructive centralized systems of extractive energy, nor support the agricultural practices that kill off the once rich soil of the San Joaquin valley, dubbed the “bread basket of the world”.  Because of industrial farming and ranching practices, the celebrated soil is still being desertified at a frightening pace. Experts predict another dust bowl phenomenon like the one that ravaged the Southern Plains in the 1930s. 

Which is why it’s so exciting to see the work of Ray Archuleta with the USDA’s National Resource Conservation Service, and rancher Gabe Brown. They’re pioneers of the soil health movement and instructors at the Soil Health Academy, which is reversing this negative trend by teaching ranchers and farmers how to build healthy soil without chemicals. Their demonstration site gets over 2000 visits a year showing the tidal shift of ranching and farming toward regenerative practices.

After applying the Academy’s six regenerative principles, ranchers who have been going ever deeper into debt to maintain the cost of equipment, chemicals and drugs (incentivized by USDA) are building healthy soil through proper grazing. This makes for living soil that retains water (reducing cost) for healthy grasses and healthy animals. Within two years ranchers are increasing their income by factors of 5 to 10 times what they were eking out of the agrochemical system. This movement is spreading across America, creating the pathway for thousands of others. 

We want to keep a close watch on the Soil Health Academy, Farmer’s Footprint, and the growing number of ERC sites around the world who are demonstrating readily available practices, mechanical systems, and belief systems designed for all of us to live regeneratively, encouraging lifeforms everywhere.  

I am grateful for the partnership of the many people I have met in the Ecosystem Restoration movement from Africa, Europe, North, South and Central America. These people are popping up everywhere, doing inspired work with a variety of practices determined by their ecosystems, regional climates, and political climates. 

Which is why we are honored for the BirdHouse to be the first urban Eco Restoration Camp.  We act as a hub of exchange for a growing number of city folks seeking connection—to each other, to the land, and to the food we eat. In our canyon under the Hollywood sign, we are engaging a community of landowners in a mutually beneficial arrangement to tend to their land without any exchange of money. 

We are creating an expanding Mosaic of privately and publicly owned plots.  Depending on the terrain, we work to restore the plant, animal and insect diversity.  Or we plant mini-orchards with an understory of grasses and herbs to be foraged for herbal remedies that will be produced in sessions of the BirdHouse Community Apothecary. 

These efforts also improve wildlife corridors and encourage biodiversity, both of which are designated goals of the Los Angeles Biodiversity Initiative. 

In 2021 a greater part of our land-based efforts will go to growing food to be shared between volunteers, landowners, and underserved communities. We’re greening the land under the Hollywood sign by growing gardens on neighbors’ land and sharing the bounty to regenerate land and people. 

There is an open invitation to YOU to get involved at the BirdHouse. 

• If you want to get your hands dirty and spend time in the garden, join us for workdays on our expanding Mosaic of land plots. If you have land that needs rehabilitation, contact us.
• If you want to learn how to bring the soil to life, join us for the Soil Sponge Collectives with Linda Gibbs.
• If you have money, vehicles, or land, and want to donate, it’s tax deductible.
• If you have a skill to share, join SkillShare.
• If you want to join us in song and story, join the Band of Singers with Maesa Pullman. Band of Singers carries the torch of biophilia and is an avenue of expression for participants living through these most unique and challenging times. Song is possibly the most enduring form of storytelling.
• If you have a place for someone to stay while they’re into town to work on BirdHouse projects, welcoming them into your home is a service to the movement. The BirdHouse being a designated Ecosystem Restoration Camp by the global EcoSystem Restoration Foundation, headquartered in Amsterdam, also means being part of the ERC eco-tourism program.  Educators and students alike will be coming to town (when Corona allows for it) who will need a place to lodge temporarily

We’re fostering art and storytelling as mediums for moving the cultural narrative away from our inherited story of the separate self in a world of other selves—separate from nature, competing for limited resources. We’re exploring a different story—of interdependence and belonging, in a world of abundance and generosity. What might that do to shift the way we interact with each other and the land?