Planting seeds
in the ashes
by Tabitha Dial
The Metropolitan
(Photo by Tabitha Dial - The Metropolitan)
Metro student and crew leader of the Learning Mountain Land Restoration Project, Kenneth Lump, taps the soil on private property above Boulderís Balarat Outdoor education center.
MSCD English Professor Sandra Doe’s campus voice mail message advised
her Service Learning/Mountain Land Restoration Project participants to
bring their rain gear and gaiters to Auraria’s King Center circle
on Saturday, June 19, 2004.
“It was raining a good clip when we left and for a moment we hesitated,
picturing ourselves working in the rain; above Jamestown, however, it
was overcast and misty; then the sun broke through,” Doe wrote in
her Service Learning report.
Doe created the Mountain Land Restoration Project with the help of MSCD
adjunct professor Lee Christopher. Doe said she constructed the project
because she wanted to perform a service. After she read Instructions to
the “Cook: A Zen Master’s Lessons in Living a Life That Matters,”
author Bernard Glassman inspired her to study fire and serve the land
and the community.
Doe experienced the transforming effect of wildfire on October 29, 2003,
when her sister, Nancy Maresh, called to say her house was going to burn.
“It turns out her house was saved by heroic fire fighter efforts,
but she has been changed. I created the Mountain Land Restoration Project
as one element of Service Learning, and as an attempt to restore her spirit”,
said Doe.
Spirit was not in short supply the morning of the service learning project.
In spite of the rain and cold, 11 Metro students, three Metro Alumni and
four community members came together outside the King Center to reseed
and mulch Maresh’s property above Boulder’s Balarat Outdoor
Education Center.
Kenneth Lump, one of ten English 382D, Nature Writing students who participated
in the project, said that people who look at the pictures he took “don’t
believe the devastation of the area. They try to imagine what the area
looked like before and what it will look like after.”
Nancy Maresh and Judith Blair, who own the property on which the project
took place, remember what the land looked like before the Overland Fire.
Doe encouraged the service learning participants to look through Maresh’s
photo album (which chronicled the fire and its aftermath) while eating
lunch on Maresh’s deck with them.
“The company of the mountain land restorers” over lunch is
one of Doe’s strongest memories of the experience, but she will
always recall “an image of those seeded mulched strips on the hillside,
like big band aids.”
Maresh and Blair wrote a letter of gratitude, sharing how the hard work
and spirit of the service learning participants opened their hearts.
“We’re touched by the energy and commitment we saw on Saturday.
We also were lifted up by seeing the land through your eyes. It was clear
everyone saw promise and that helped us to see that too,” wrote
Maresh and Blair.
Doe ignited the promise in participants, not only by emphasizing the
importance of service and restoring the land, but by creating “The
Burning Papers,” a book of student writings that she and Lee are
in the process of editing and publishing.
“I wanted to have a tangible outcome,” Doe said, so she invited
students from the Earth Science Club of Metro State, and alumni from her
Spring 2004 capstone writing course to provide material for
“The Burning Papers” and hands to help with the project.
Before the project, Maresh and Blair were overwhelmed by the “sheer
weight of the loss” and “the volume of work required to cope
and reclaim.”
Their house was saved last October by fire fighters and a $5,000 Wildfire
Mitigation Grant from the Colorado Forest Service, but the land will need
time to heal.
Some of the trees on the property had to be removed. One survives, perhaps
to spite those who believed it unable to show signs of life. Doe knows
how that tree is not unlike Metro State. “As a college, we have
everything we need, and we are an agent of transformation, like water
and fire.”
Knowledge is another agent of transformation.
In the weeks before heading to the site, Doe’s Nature Writing students
studied fire. “The writings were well crafted and thoughtful, but
flat. After the students experienced the restoration, the language was
richer, the tones passionate, full of energy,” she said.
Doe and Lee believe that their fellow instructors will to want engage
their students in writing, instead of giving students abstract exercises.
Doe views service learning “as a way to extend beyond the classroom—actual
or online—and to produce written work that matters.”
The physical work of mountain land restorers matters as well, according
to Doe, who feels Boulder residents should be concerned about protecting
their land.
She pointed out that seventeen houses were burned in the Overland Fire
Community, and a hillside in Jamestown, just south of the fire, recently
put the town in the news when it washed down and covered a road in mud.
Earth, air, fire, water… These are the elements Doe considered
as she created her Nature Writing course.
All four are elements of life. “The grasses are coming up,”
said Doe.
“Fire and water and service learning people transformed the hillside.”
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