Yesterday evening, just past sunset in fading light, I wheeled my red wheelbarrow back home and into the garden shed for the last time. This year’s tree planting and repair is finished. My palms are a bit sore from having pushed into the ground 3,000 bamboo stakes (even while wearing padded bicycle gloves). The usual neck and back problems flared up from the constant kneeling and bending over to plant the 520 trees and small shrubs and repair an additional 300 other trees from previous years.
But….. what a feeling of righteous goodness! Looking back up the hill one can only see a future forest emerging in thirty to fifty years. Any pain disappears beneath the overwhelming joy of having done something truly worthy.
When one kneels before an altar, are there thoughts of sore knees? Surely not.
And thanks to Cawley, Jill and Sophie for the days they helped.
Talk about feeling blessed. While planting some blackwood trees two days ago near the circle at the top right of the photo, I stood up to have a stretch. Looking down the hill and out across Storm Bay with my arms held wide (like Christ on the cross) admiring the view, a wedge tail eagle came by my right side from behind me. The eagle did a slow circle around me about 25 feet in the air and then continued on her way. I never flinched.
The suddenness of it wasn’t a surprise. I just smiled, kept my arms outstretched and sang the bird’s praises.
And for an update on a previous blog entry (August 19), My little boat sculpture ‘Who’s On Board?’, won first place and $5,000 at the 3rd Tweed Wood Biennial.
What especially heartened me with the win was that the award acknowledges that art and politics can be a winning combination.
Just concentrating on the beauty of the form is only half the prize; the deeper content of how we as a nation treat refugees is the other, more powerful half.
More money for more trees.
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