Refuse Darkness: Reflections on Hope

Since I moved four hours further north to serve as a GrizzlyCorps Fellow in Siskiyou County, the days have been getting shorter at an alarming rate. Although GrizzlyCorps serves California, I’m so far north, it’s almost Oregon. Most Californians consider the Bay Area “NorCal,” which leads to this region to being called the “Far North” (which sounds like we’re in Game of Thrones) or the “REAL north state” (which is a direct quote from an email welcoming me here). Many people here feel so disconnected from the urban elite in California coastal cities that they would rather be a part of the mostly rural “State of Jefferson” instead. This area certainly is a far cry from sunny San Diego, where I was born and raised. Coming from SD, I call myself a “palm tree” to indicate my lack of temperature tolerance. Like many people from SoCal, I considered 60s cold, 70s perfect, 80s and 90s hot, and everything else unacceptable. This palm tree has had a little time to grow thicker NorCal bark that can deal with small amounts of snow and fire, but is now being threatened with Vitamin D deficiency. The sun sets just before 5:00 and it will remain that way until mid-January. This means my workday ends suddenly at 4:30, so I have enough time to walk my puppy, Blaze, up the hill before it gets too dark. The increasing darkness reminds me why this time of year is associated with hope – a virtue far more necessary in the darkness and cold than it is in the light and warmth. 

Sydney, Blaze and the Datsun. PC: Tom Pastore

Hope is a recent interest of mine – one that I have long dismissed as ungrounded optimism bordering on willful and dangerous ignorance. From the time I was in elementary school, I felt hopeless and guilty about my default role in the climate crisis, as someone born to a middle-class family in the US. I would be angry at my parents for using cars, even for short distances. That anger sometimes extended to all adults, who from my view, were complicit in my generations’ and all future generations’ destruction. I would try to reduce the plastic products came in, becoming involved in minimalism and zero waste lifestyles in high school. 

I was sold an individualistic solution to the climate crisis. I was told if I was able to control all the inputs and outputs of my life, carefully opting-out of the status quo in every action, I could be the solution. 

I was sold a lie. 

The truth is this: I am powerless over the climate crisis. 

At UC Santa Barbara, where I earned my Bachelor’s in Environmental Studies, I mostly worked from a place of despair. In a natural disasters class, we learned about the fire that destroyed Paradise and killed 85 people in 2018, due to a poorly maintained transmission line owned by PG&E. In 2021, the Dixie fire started from almost the same ignition point in Feather River Canyon and burned just shy of a million acres. My brain told me, “The world is full of companies and people allowed to do terrible things without consequence. You can't fix it.” And when I learned about someone fighting back, about Greta Thunberg working to start youth-led climate protests that spread around the globe, my brain said, “Their actions are temporary, the darkness is eternal.”

Finally, in my last year at UCSB, my internal narrative was given seeds of change. I learned about agroecology’s ways of turning the entire agriculture industry from a climate problem into a carbon-sequestering and biodiversity-increasing solution. I learned about ways that Native peoples lived in the Americas before colonization, with use but not mass exploitation of natural resources. I began to see an alternative world where the climate crisis had been solved. 

As I tried out jobs in regenerative farming, outdoor education and prescribed fire since graduating, I saw first-hand the day-to-day work of getting to my alternative world – and doubt crept in. It is much more comfortable for me to be hopeful when sitting in the studying-planning-and-preparing chair, looking down on the world and its problems. Once I was down on the ground, I felt everyday like I was not doing enough. My brain said, “You cut a couple trees today to make the forest more fire-safe? Don’t you see how many thousands of trees need to still come down? Don’t you know how big the darkness is? You’re never going to do it all.” 

My old story remained. I thought that it was possible that a better world could be reached, but that sliver of possibility was so small that it wasn’t even worth registering. The darkness still felt inevitable and insurmountable. Each job, although doing helpful work, felt meaningless. My coworkers were often harried, overworked and burnt-out. Going to work felt like punching a giant insatiable all-encompassing monster, not because I believed I could kill it, but because I wanted to give the appearance of trying. Afterward, I would go home to curl back up in the arms of despair, because I had no belief the monster could ever be defeated. 

I was lashing out from a place of despair. I gave up easily, because the first challenge was a confirmation the work would never succeed. 

Here in Siskiyou County, I have met amazing people who are running a native plant nursery, who are wonderfully passionate about getting native seeds and propagating them and distributing them to the community. They do not overwork themselves, thinking they need to “do it all.” They focus on the small plants right in front of them, having fun with each other, and continuing their organization. It is a completely different culture than many non-profits I have been involved in: a culture where the love of the plants we are caring for is greater than climate despair, where the focus is on what we are able to control, and where people’s limitations are respected. 

They don’t seem to see the darkness that should be sapping their energy. 

Maybe change doesn't have to happen by breaking our bodies against the institutions that we disagree with, but by choosing (where and when we can) to create a new reality. Maybe I can choose to stop calling my nihilist worldview “realistic” and view positive changes as us creating a new world that is better than the one we currently have. All the people and organizations doing work with the goals of addressing the climate crises and reducing human suffering are connected, creating a huge community that is creating a new vision – and therefore a new world. Every time I see their work, I can imagine it as a sign of the light that will eventually shine out the darkness that currently exists in our world. They are not individual candles. They are the dots we place down in prescribed fire: starting slow and far apart, until they burn together and remake the world: not through destruction, but through good work and caring for each other. 

I believe it is possible that we live in a different world – a world where we trust that our next several generations have clean air and water, where our systems are based on equity and diversity, where human rights are respected, where houses and medical care are accessible to all, where other people and the environment are prioritized. 

There have always been people in terrible situations who have chosen hope over despair, people who have chosen to be part of something bigger than themselves. After all, humans are not primarily logical, but feeling and caring beings. How can I, in my hopelessness and powerlessness, call upon the spirit of those who have begun or joined projects they will never live to see finished? 

My bosses, Kathleen and Robin, are some of those people. Here at Guys Gulch Ecological Reserve, we will not see the end of our projects. There are 1,000 acres of land and a lot of restoration work to do before it is able to be the biodiverse, fire-safe, and resilient landscape we imagine it can become. Kathleen began a native plant nursery up in Washington at Clark College, due to hopeless students like me who wanted to join the larger narrative of people creating a better world. Robin founded the Center for EcoDynamic Agriculture (later changed to Restoration, or CEDR for short), which does restoration projects between rows of crops or on public lands. In 2019, they acquired Guys Gulch Ecological Reserve to restore for the future. 

As I have been laying seeds, cutting down trees, and planning for the upcoming projects at Guys Gulch, I have been resisting my brain’s statements about futility and despair. I have begun to sing a different tune. My voice is weak and out of practice, but becoming stronger and surer. I am choosing to join into a song that I did not start and will not live to see finished. I am choosing to add flame to the fire that will light up the world.

Right now, that means loving the land and working for her benefit. I have given days to cutting small trees and piling them, so that if a fire comes through this area, the overall tree death will be lower. I have given days to spreading seeds and planting starts. I have made friends and invited the community to be involved with our projects. I have been excited by prospects of future grants and projects in the next couple years for CEDR. 

Today, I was watering small plants we put in the ground a month ago because it has been a dry week. I was finishing up when I felt a couple drops on my hand – it was raining. Nature was telling me that she would take care of the rest. 

I alone am still powerless, but I believe in the power of community and Nature herself to actualize these visions of restoration. I would like to help, boots on the ground and hands in the dirt. 

I trust that the light of Spring will come.

Sydney and a volunteer burning piles. PC: Robin Dobson