Jumping Mice put an exclamation point on spring service!

I’ve been writing blog posts about our service work for a few years now. After that much time, it begins to feel repetitive to write about uprooting Himalayan Blackberries and stomping down and covering the Reed Canary Grass with bark. In fact, until this season, it has been primarily the same work each time (I’ll explain it a bit why the work was a little different this time).

Notice the Reed Canary Grass? I didn't think so! (Of course,
it'll come back...but less seems to come back each season.)

So let’s refresh our thinking about why we do this work. Two Explorers Club mottos will help here. The first: All things are connected. "If you go off into a far, far forest and get very quiet, you'll come to understand that you're connected with everything." – Alan Watts 

On our outings, we point out and experience these connections as much as possible. In the course of our exploring, we come to realize that all things really are connected — mosquitoes and streams, cows and the Salish Sea, litter and otters, the skies over China and over us — and that all our actions have an impact.

We probably should've put more tiers of cribbing. Live and learn.

Notice - “all our actions” have an impact. The actions of others have caused significant degradation to a section of Happy Valley Park. We have committed ourselves to restoring the habitat for the sake of the mosquitoes, people, cows, the Salish Sea, otters and of course, salmon. Yes, the work is difficult and repetitive, but the positive impact is great.

The second motto: Connect and protect. When we’re exploring and playing games in the forest, we impact the land. We do this in service to what we perceive to be the higher goal of connection. "If we want children to flourish, to become truly empowered, then let us allow them to love the earth before we ask them to save it."-David Sobel 

I'll bet your Explorer can tells you the steps to place cribbing
in securely.

However, we do impact the land. So we work to restore it as a way of balancing the damage we do and because when we connect we recognize the need to also protect.

In Sunday’s case, we also got to learn a new technique involved in restoring riparian habitat. You see, we reached the creek this season! Years of hard work have produced visible, tangible results. It has also changed the work. On Sunday, we did little weeding and no bark shuttling. Instead, we built “cribbing”, or barriers to retain the soil and bark in place and not in the stream, where it degrades the water quality on which salmon rely.

Ask your Explorer for the 3 C's of a high quality salmon stream.

Connection happens when we're engaged directly
with the land.

Mentors and Explorers alike are learning as we go through this restoration process. Your boy’s work was inconsistent on this final service day of the spring, but when it came time to depart, each Explorer and mentor was able to see the good work he’d done — on Sunday and over the two years the Jumping Mice have been shouldering their share of the burden.

To give you an idea of the progress - here's a boy from another
group working on the Reed Canary Grass 3 years ago Compare with the
photo from Sunday below.

Blackberry - again, three years ago.

This was taken Sunday. The section of fence you see was
"discovered" in the midst of raging Himalayan Blackberry!

We meet again on June 4 at Lookout Mountain Forest Preserve. More photos here.