Crazy ideas that seem impossible
A first canoe story
On a cold March morning, under a penetrating fog, Yurok tribal council members were giving me a tour of O’Rew, at the southern edge of Redwoods State and National Park.
Here, the poetics of this place are hard to ignore. The redwood shaded trails once connected villages with the Klamath and Trinity Rivers, the coast, and each other. The land was then stolen from the indigenous community and became a site of death and destruction and pollution. It became a former redwood logging mill that tribal members had to work at to put food on the table.
I was here to report on the next phase of this land’s life. A nonprofit, Save the Redwoods League, had purchased the land and partnered with other conservation agencies and the Yurok tribe to restore the creek to once again make it a safe harbor for juvenile salmon.
A year from completion, we stood on the banks of the newly rerouted Prairie Creek celebrating the sprouting redwoods, the green frogs leaping into the bog, and the return of the baby salmon.
Barry McCovey, a Yurok tribal member and a local ecologist who worked on the restoration, starting with the ripping up of acres of pavement, surveyed a new bend in the creek and said, “Crazy ideas that seem impossible are possible.”
We admired the alchemy of this environment to its more natural, though well-tended, state.
But McCovey wanted to make sure the focus was also on the long term vision and patience required for conservation work. “We might not get to see results, but you get to know that you did something to help.”
He and his crew have not only restored this land, but the Yurok community is now receiving this land back from Save the Redwoods league. In addition the partnership is also creating a new system of co-management where the tribe has support from the National and State Park system and the league.
Today, as your chosen media diet blows up with talk of Earth Day, I wanted us to honor those cray-cray ideas we deem impossible—like reclaiming a logging mill, cleaning it up so baby salmon can return, and then transferring the land back to the original stewards.
My job is to find those stories of of impossibility and share them with you. The people regenerating coral, changing tourism so it funds conservation, fighting for water rights, and the list goes on.
But my job is also to listen.
And in my entire time of being a journalist, here is my favorite story I have ever heard.
John De Fries, former head of Hawaii Tourist Authority once told me that a long time ago, explorers first set out in canoes using the stars as their compass. They didn’t know what they’d find, or how they’d find it. Maybe back home, the Polynesians were saying it was a crazy idea that seemed impossible, but those first canoe explorers found Hawaii.
De Fries explained that for every major global challenge we face, specifically our climate crisis, we need first canoe explorers. We need people with crazy ideas that seem impossible, who have patience, tenacity, and determination. And friends, those people are out there working. Find and amplify the work of those first canoe folks.
Because maybe you are not a first canoe voyager. Maybe you are a second canoe, or even a eighteen hundred and fifty third canoe kinda person, and that’s ok. We need all kinds of people on boats, ready to help steward the future in whatever way we can.
So today, on Earth Day, you find a first canoe story and share it with all the people in your community, something that inspires them, something that spirals us out of the dread we might feel when we think of yet another Earth Day without the systematic changes we need.
Today, seek solution stories that spark hope.
~ Michele