Having camped among the coyotes, pronghorns & nighthawks, i wandered through the remote restoration work site before anyone else arrived. Piles of rock stretched far out along these high meadows of the Red Desert. We intended to hand-place rocks into a variety of Zeedyk structures to help keep moisture here at the top of the Sweetwater River watershed longer into the growing season, bolstering the meadows' resilience in the face of increasing heat and decreasing summer precipitation. Yes, that will benefit the pronghorns, animals who once raced across these steppes with saber-toothed cats. Healthy meadows support southern red-backed voles too, a mouse-like animal favored by those singing coyotes. Underground moisture keeps a diversity of insects winging about, who pollinate a variety of plants--and after whom the nighthawks dive and dance.
On paper, this landscape is also many different things. Within the Bureau of Land Management's file system, it is "allotted" under permit to a cattle rancher. The National Park Service manages the Continental Divide National Scenic Trail which runs north-south, and also a collection of east-west California and Oregon routes that were part of the "Manifest Destiny" doctrine created as euro-american colonizers were encouraged to make new lives across a continent falsely advertised as uninhabited. The precise area of our worksite lies outside current Wind River Reservation boundaries, but the South Pass area was within traditional territories known to more tribes than the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho now living in those communities. Non-governmental groups like the Wyoming Wildlife Federation, The Nature Conservancy, and Wyoming Wilderness Association bring their different lenses to the ecologies and social perspectives that comprise this place.
While scissors might bring to mind our cultural habit of cutting things apart, on my second night of camping i learned a different possibility. As the nighthawks began their joyful skating across the sky, three more people added their sleeping bags to the upland sagebrush community. An organizer from WWA had cut up small rectangles of blank paper and led us on a three-part version of "charades on steroids", sometimes called Salad Bowl, where rules were flexible and points didn't count. The game--like our mutual daytime goal--brought us together with hilarity and challenge. Repairing human damages we've only begun to recognize takes relationships across all kinds of organizations, agencies, curious individuals and even funding partners, incorporating the deep scientific insights of specialists from range managers to watershed rehabilitators. It also takes a versatile sense of humor, and a playful approach to collaborative work that doesn't keep score but instead, keeps the ball in the air. If long, dry days at elevation hefting rock across awkward hummocks sounds unbearable, you would be wrong. Getting engaged with organizations that connect us to the needs of our planetary home, you might be surprised to hear the ways laughter lessens all loads. What seems at first glance impossible--becomes a puzzle worthy of our investments.
"These times are urgent. Let us slow down." - Bayo Akomolafe
