Tend to This Earth
In the summer of 2019, Joe and I were living in the flats of Richmond, CA, in a wee little house with a postage stamp-sized yard. We had planted an apple tree along the fence and put in raised beds for veggies. Even so, longing for more nature (and less time on the highway) filled me, so we started talking about moving away.
In July of that year, we found ourselves looking at the property in Mendocino County that we would eventually buy and turn into the Pudding Creek Refuge. Looking back on it now, it all seems so certain and fated, but at the time nothing was clear. The place was a mess, and we would need so many things to line up for it to become real. But by September we were in contract (ask me later about the 1 million things that went down to make that happen, including me having surgery in the middle of this time!). Even though we were in contract, we had not yet walked the entire 25 acres of land.
On Halloween of 2019, we drove away from life as we had known it for the past 20 years. There were massive fires along both sides of the highway on the drive north to our new home. Because of the fires, the electricity was out for much of Northern California. At almost midnight, we drove the 4 miles of dirt road and arrived at our dark new home in the middle of an inky black forest. It was a clear, cold night and the stars were bright and glittering.
It wasn't until much later that we noticed a car and a washing machine tucked up into the woods in a drainage and under some brambles. In the course of things, we met someone whose family owned the Refuge in the 60's and 70's. It turns out that the car was his Corvair.
There are so many problems in this world. It is easy to get overwhelmed with a heart that wants to help but no clear direction on what to do. Now mindfulness is something I have been practicing for two decades, and the instructions are clear: meet the moment, meet whatever is immediate, and tend to that which is right in front of you. I am not sure what I can do in this moment about species extinction, drought and political extremism, but I can tend to my immediate environment which turned out to have a garbage dump placed in a water way up the hill above my and our neighbor's houses.
So Joe and I decided to pull the garbage out of the ravine. First we cleared the overgrown path up to the area. It was obvious that at some point there was more of a road, but years have passed and the forest grows in. After putting on our gloves, we climbed in and started pulling out what we could get by hand. I felt like an archaeologist digging up decades of stuff. There were parts of an old railway line, parts of a horse drawn carriage and a bag of used kitty litter. There was more below the surface than was obvious and we needed help to get the bigger stuff out.
On Monday after a cup of coffee, we set to work with a musician friend and his tractor. The car was first to come out followed by a washing machine and a refrigerator. Next week we will rent a truck to properly dispose of the whole mess.
Each of us can take our care for the world and put it into action. You probably don't have a dump site at your house, but maybe you are inclined to join your neighborhood community garden, volunteer at meals on wheels, be politically active, write letters, or take care of your elderly neighbor. You don't have to solve all of the world's problems - no one can do this on their own anyway. Just do something, something small that is meaningful to you. All of our efforts will join together and we can leave the world a better place than we found it.