Dear friends ~
May you be finding and creating small pockets of sanctuary and refuge. We are in this together. We need all of us, as Ejeris Dixon on podcast below reminds us.
One of the places that has offered me refuge for decades, where I feel most at home and love deeply, is the oak chaparral woodlands where I was born and currently live. The creeks, sandstone, sycamores, maple, blossoming hummingbird sage, blue eyed grass, figwort and pearly everlasting, salamanders, maiden hair fern, fox and bobcats, bring me back to myself, to my entanglement within a shimmering world. This abundant place is the land of the Chumash people, and I am grateful to have been raised, grown and tended by my relationships with this place.
Thirty years ago, I began to walk the mountain paths and off trail too, meeting the plants that are home here, and exploring the terrain, while recovering from a substantial knee injury sustained in a mountain biking accident while in Colorado. I took myself out 'alone' many a night under the stars, encountering ancient red ocher paintings, and other signs of human habitation from many generations ago - in a time before digital time, and linear time. A time I would often imagine, as I crested the ridge and saw the city below, squinting to feel what this place would have been like before the age of the modern world. Do not get me wrong, I do not want to 'go back in time', only to honor ancient and indigenous wisdom to be with our current polycrisis.
I am lucky to have had the impulse, time, access and sensibility that made it possible for me to inhabit such wild and beautiful places in my mid twenties, post an undergraduate college degree in the study of psychology as I searched for what it means to be human, knowing in my heart the pain and violence caused by modernity and colonialism, even with all the comforts. I am just now remembering that when I returned to Santa Barbara after a year round the world journey I embarked on after completing college, which culminated with a few months in India, I could not bring myself to sleep in my parents lovely suburban tract house home, and opted to camp out in their back yard. Chellis Glenndinning's book, "My Name is Chellis and I'm in Recovery from Western Civilization" had a big impact; even just the title. Knowing there were folks speaking of such things, outside the mostly mainstream life I was brought up in.
I am pretty sure I did my first solo overnight camping trip in these mountains in the Los Padres National Forest along the Manzana Creek and faced my fear of mountain lions. More than anything, however, I was afraid of people, specifically of the male variety. So I would cozy up in my sleeping bag without a fire so as to avoid drawing attention to myself and enjoy the beauty and magic of the living world.
This week a young mountain lion was hit by a vehicle as the cat ran across the freeway in downtown Santa Barbara. Who needs to be afraid of whom? Try as hard as I might, I cannot squint this away, nor any of the other massive harms we humans cause the natural world and our human kin. There has been talk of the import and benefit of wild life crossings. In most native languages there does not even exist a word for wild. Nor the duality of animate and inanimate to speak of the living world. Although national parks and forests, as well as wild life crossings, are a primary way that lands and life get protected, this type of conservation leaves out the contributions of a reciprocity and exchange that indigenous peoples have with place, and also literally forces people off of the their tribal lands.
Research shows what many of us intuitively know, that “'biodiversity is declining more slowly in areas managed by [Indigenous peoples and local communities] than elsewhere,' more than 20 researchers argued in a recent perspective article in the journal Ambio." Studies define these indigenous and community conserved areas, ICCA, as distinct from other conserved land due to the reality that their cultural lifeways are deeply embedded within the land. "That means Indigenous peoples and local communities conserve far more of the Earth than, say, national parks and forests. (Protected and conservation areas overseen by countries — some of which overlap with Indigenous territories — cover just 14 percent of all land on Earth, according to the report.)"
From Vox article Indigenous peoples protect more of Earth's biodiversity than countries do (https://www.vox.com/22518592/indigenous-people-conserve-nature-icca)
Even with the problems and limitations of national parks and forest service with regards to conservation efforts and the erasure of indigenous peoples, they have protected thousands of acres from development, destruction, deforestation and extraction, and have offered myself and countless others, sustenance, awe, embrace, sanctuary and a remembering of our collective inheritance of this magnificent and beautiful world.
Today our local lands need our help!
Here is what you need to know to take simple action by tomorrow when public comment period closes - Forest Watch's take action by June 2 .
"In 2022, the U.S. Forest Service announced the “Ecological Restoration Project,” a misnamed and poorly-planned proposal to clear vegetation and wildlife habitat across more than 235,000 acres (368 square miles) of Los Padres National Forest in Ventura, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Monterey, and southwestern Kern counties. In May 2025, the project was rebranded as the Wildfire Risk Reduction Project and reduced to 90,700 acres. Despite the welcome downsizing, the project’s impacts to environmental, recreational, and cultural sites remain widespread and significant. ForestWatch is now working with our environmental and tribal allies to convince the U.S. Forest Service to further refine and reduce the project. This project represents the largest mechanical alteration of land in the history of Los Padres National Forest."
Thank you for reading, caring, and for all of you who work for, or who have worked for, the US Forest Service. For all of you who are indigenous and fighting for land and water rights, and all those in support of rematriation and land back movements and stories (shout out to Three Creeks in Payahunadu)
If you have not yet checked out the upcoming Songraiser, a very special community song gathering happening online on June 18 at 6pm pt, which will help raise funds for the upcoming Lake to Lake water walk in Payahunadu, join us in solidarity, soul nourishment and joy with song carriers Karisha Longaker (MaMuse), Te Martin, Shireen Amini and Alexandra Blakely.
Also, thank you S. for supporting the walk with your auction purchase of a 1:1 threshold guiding session with me. For anyone else who is interested in one on one mentorship and accompaniment, you can find out more on my website, which I am excited to be updating soon!
One last thing, if you are local to Southern California, come join us for the last Land Listening Earth Circle of the season on Summer Solstice, June 21, before we pause for summer. This one will be slightly different form so be sure to check out the link and register for more info and stay tuned for email update.
Ok, a last nudge to take a few minutes right now: Forest Watch's take action by June 2 . Thank you!! Bless you. Deep breath. We need all of us.
with love and blessings,
Alexis
Inspiration and Resources
Beautiful and poignant piece by writer and author Frederick Joseph.
America's Last Best Thing: On Trump's National Park Layoffs and the Erosion of America's Public Land. I recently bought his new book This Thing of Ours, though have not read it yet.
Podcast on The Fascim Barometer: Grief is the Healing: Malkia Device-Cyril on Organzing Through Loss
"The Fascim Barometer is an educational project where we learn together what racism is, how to stay safe and how to create democracy and liberation for us all."