My Three Hopeless Affirmations

Sometimes it is the people closest to you who can give you something to hold on to when everything seems hopeless.

A few years ago I traveled to Scotland to teach my second firewalk instructor training since the wildfire at Warrior Heart Ranch. I’ve been lighting fires on purpose and teaching others how to walk across the coals for decades; now my relationship with fire felt even more intimate, and tender. Honestly, looking back I was still somewhat in shock.

My dear friends and co-facilitators, Peggy Dylan and Stephen Mulhearn, asked questions, consoled, and listened as I shared about the impacts of the wildfire on the land I love and steward.

Then they helped me craft three affirmations.

Which I didn’t believe were possible.

At all.

The three affirmations were:

— The land is taken care of by the right people

— By feeding the land you nourish the whole earth

— The unfolding new dream is even more beautiful for me and the land

These all felt like impossible wishes, unreal visions. I still had smoke and acres of black trees and ruin in my head.

And so I literally carried those words around with me for months. Every once in a while I would pull the paper out, read the words, wince at the impossibility, and then tuck the paper away.

I kept going, one foot after another, not knowing how any of this was going to come about.

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While I’ve been traveling and teaching in Mexico and Europe this summer, visionaries with pick axes, scientists with creative mojo, and long-time locals with mad skills have been crafting an epic project across one of the largest and most hard-hit areas of the burn scar. As part of her ongoing Bellow Forth project Kaitlin Bryson and team crafted six rain circles: 30-foot terraced circles dug into the earth with both tractor and human labor.

These three pictures show the circles taking shape. In the fall they will be planted with trees, native grasses, and wildflowers.

These rain circles are still being fined tuned. Three of the six circles will be used as control and each of the other three will be planted first with part of a mycellium-laced, hand-made quilt made with prayer and ceremony. Here is the true mage: part of the experiment is to see if prayer and ceremony make a difference in land restoration.

Here is the quilt, which is all hand colored with natural dyes, being pieced together:

Learn more about the first quilts Kaitlin planted right after the 2022 fire on the Bellowforth website: https://www.bellowforth.com/quilt

Kaitlin and team also planted dozens of trees and berry bushes along the creek. We now are a home to baby aspen, cottonwood, chokeberry, spruce, pine, native plum, and more… along with the many wildflowers and grasses that have sprouted from the seed balls we’ve been planting over the years.

Okay, friends… this part my brain can barely wrap around!

We are learning more and more how critical mycelium is to soil and land health. After super-hot wildfires sometimes the heat is so intense it kills the mycelium network under the ground, which makes it much more difficult for plants and trees to take root and survive.

Kaitlin and team have been taking samples of mycelium from the soil and dead trees around the land. She shared with me that the team has been surprised to see what is showing up, as mycelium doesn’t usually like pine trees as its first choice.

Here is the first batch they harvested and are growing so they can DNA sequence each species:

Once they study and categorize each type of fungi, they plan to take each sample and grow it in successively more dense and nutritious mediums until it spoors. They then will grind down the individual strains and store them. This will give them a fungi bank which can be saved for 100 years and used for future wildfire restoration.

Can you see me jumping up and down clapping my hands and crying? Because truly I am around this part of the science happening at Warrior Heart Ranch. We will truly be a hub for helping the earth heal for future generations.

This the view from the ridge looking over Hermit’s Peak. The terraces you see in the middle of the photograph will become seed banks for wildflowers and grasses, which will become long-term stores for future wildlife restoration in our area and beyond.

They look tiny from above, but they are huge terraces that you can see out the window of our community kitchen. Along with creating a seed bank I’m also excited to create beauty and local pollinator support by planting large swatches of cosmos, bee balm, echinacea, and other pretty flowers. Yeeeee!

One of our fall projects is dropping the generator-powered well pump another hundred feet or so to see if we can pump more water at a time into the 1500 gallon tank, which you can just barely see above the terraces.

May we all remember: grieve the loss. Feel the heartbreak. Surround yourself with people who can help you hold the vision of possibility. Especially when you can’t see it yourself yet.

Blessings!