Hi, friend.

Like so many, I find it incredibly hard to concentrate today. I have also been watching and contacting my rep and praying for a miracle against the terrible bill which passed while writing this. I’ve been disgusted and grieving and deeply angered by the racism against LatinX people. I’ve been worried for my friends. At the same time, I’ve been checking every few minutes, scrolling – looking for words and wondering what the hell I could say right now and what I can do. Nothing feels like it’s enough. And I know from conversation after conversation, that I am not the only one who feels this weight and this pull to do more.

I don’t really have an answer for you today.

I really wish I did. And if you have one, write me back and let me know.

But I will share with you some reflections I had this morning and how I believe more deeply in the interconnection of all things. And how doing what we can matters.

This morning, I went outside to work in the garden, but for the second day in a row got stopped by a terrible and all too common farming practice – the spreading of chicken litter all over the pastures near our house. We deal with it every year, and each year it seems to upset me more. Brown dust clouds filled the air behind the trucks yesterday, with no regard to the people living nearby, workers outside, the grazing cows (yes, they eat it), or the land herself. Under the guise of “fertilizing” crops, CAFO chicken houses offer truck-loads of manure that often carry dead birds, dangerous pathogens, and an odor I can’t even begin to describe. It *is* a load of shit.

This morning, as I was picking blueberries and battling the smell and the onslaught of blackflies, I found myself grieving for this land. I grieve for the trees, for the animals, for the native plants. I spoke a promise out loud to do more when there is more that I can do. We don’t own the land. We are the mercy of the owner and the tenant cattle farmer. But one day, it will be different.

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In the meantime, I’ve daydreamed about learning how to dismantle ignitions and braking systems like conservationists fighting logging trucks have done. More tangibly, we are protesting and fighting more CAFO chicken houses in our county. And I’m recognizing the impact of other actions I’ve taken.

Around my garden, I created what’s known as a “dead hedge.” Instead of a living hedge of shrubs or trees, a dead hedge is an ancient type of structure made of sticks, logs, and twigs. It’s a barrier, but also a harbor for insects, birds, and small mammals and reptiles.

I’ve worked to spread more native plants and to have wild areas in the yard. Slowly, and most noticeably this year, our yard is full of beneficial insects. Fireflies, lady bugs, so many kinds of bees, butterflies, and more fill the garden and the area where we live. More birds have come to live here. Something is working to restore and rewild.

After I stopped picking berries, I felt the weight of the other shit load, the one that has been dumped on us by politicians, greedy corporations, and forces against the well-being of our planet. I started to feel despair. Not sadness, but true despair.

Then, the strangest thing gave me a glimmer of hope. A mockingbird started to sing.

Mockingbirds mimic what they hear. They can mimic around 200 sounds, even sounds that are not birds. I once lost sleep over a young mockingbird on our porch trying to sound like a tree frog and cricket.

This mockingbird, though, did imitate another bird. A bird who is facing population decline. A bird I love to hear but as I’ve grown older haven’t heard as much.

The whippoorwill.

Somewhere, during the night, after I’ve taken out our dog and gone to sleep, and maybe even so far back in the land where I can’t hear – the whippoorwill must be singing.

Her nocturnal song calls out across the field and trees, underneath the moon and stars, lonesome and seeming to say her own name – perhaps announcing her own place in the family of things, to paraphrase Mary Oliver.

I know that this mockingbird singing the song of the whippoorwill is small potatoes, but I also know it means that the whippoorwill has returned. She’s alive. Even when I can’t see her.

Maybe that’s true of hope in this moment. Maybe she’s still alive, even when we can’t see her. Maybe we can’t even hear her singing.

But maybe we can hear and sing her song for each other. And remind each other she still lives.

This is embodying our interconnection. This is remembering how deeply connected we are. This is taking care of each other and taking care of ourselves. It’s how we will create the world we do want to live in. It’s how we tend to well-being and embodied kinship and how we band together and as our civil rights elders spoke of: “re-member.”

We are in this together.

With love,

Charity