Sustained by the Natural World

This is a common theme. As I make my way through a sweet pine forest along the big Willamette, the sense is there.

Along the path between the trees, a regular patten of native shrubs, nootka rose, Douglas spirea, snowberry and more. In this place there is a sense of being within a protective shield of ecological present, and the memory of what has been. Here and there pockets of wildflowers persist, against all of the odds against them.

There is also an urgent sense of what needs to be protected, the hope of providing for real growth and continuation, season after season and year after year amid a regular barrage of threats.

So many threats from the human-kind are present in such places. All of the regular human notions of progress that affect our remaining natural places where forests, upland or floodplain, creeks, rivers, and wildlife are sustained and preserved. At the same time, there is a strength and persistence that seems to emanate from our natural places, for those who can see it and feel it.

In some places the cut of the axe and the run of the plow have never been seen. Here and there the remnant habitats perhaps thousands of years old still dot the landscape. Across the expanse new habitats are created, and sustained. At times the line is held for places that need protection at a variety of scales - and that work is the good work.

The notion to understand is that the work continues, even in the face of buzz words, popular rhetoric, and those who seek to meet their needs over what may be true.