Two years after the fire – we are rebuilding!

Our blog has been pretty quiet these past months, but that does not mean we have not been busy. We have been deep in the process of finalizing our permit submittals and hiring a contractor for our first three residential structures at the Rill!

First, Amy used her archival skills to help our architect (Robin Stephani of 8th Wave) reconstruct our very complicated permit history dating back to the late 1970s. So many buildings and so many owners and so many permits! Once this was done, Robin could let the county know about our septic capacity and our long-term rebuild plans. Then she finalized our permit submittals and we all held our breath. Or rather, we tried to breathe steadily, and kept doing our best to take care of one another and the land.

In the hot months of summer we harvested more azolla, that miracle fern that nourishes our garden. And we continue to remove invasives (yellow star thistle, stinkwort, tree of heaven, and more) when we find them, if the ground is not too hard and dry.

And e built a new chicken coop. We transported it backwards to its new home in the garden, Vinca and Amy getting some forward-facing tractor lessons from Thea along the way.

Through the Monan’s Rill Institute, we prepped and hosted another oak restoration event, except this time we got to be in the rain! We raked and weed-whipped under oaks with what promised to be a plentiful acorn harvest, and then collected acorns and continued to protect native seedlings.

The Rill was featured in the fall issue of Made Local Magazine. Ursa Born, who has been working by our side and tenderly observing us since the Glass Fire, wrote a beautiful piece – “Fighting Fire with Fire” – about our commitment to prescribed fire. Thea, who is a Fire Forward fellow this year with Audubon Canyon Ranch, was on the cover.

We’ve also started holding once-monthly pancake breakfasts, so that sometimes we are just breaking bread (or waffles) together, having fun.

But the big news is rebuilding!

This past Friday evening our contractor, Dustin Deason of Brandywine Construction and Design, held a Golden Shovel fire rebuild ceremony with us. We took turns turning over a shovelful of soil at each of the three building sites. We are so thankful to Dustin for his patient and knowledgable guidance as we enter into this new phase of recovery. And we are thankful to so many teachers and friends who have offered us nourishment and helping hands along the way. At the ceremony, e read an excerpt from Terry Tempest Williams’s essay “The Pall of Our Unrest,” which has been reminding us all along why we are doing what we do. Here it is:

“Grief is love. How can we hold this grief without holding each other? To bear witness to this moment of undoing is to find the strength and spiritual will to meet the dark and smoldering landscapes where we live. We can cry. Our tears will fall like rain in the desert and wash off our skins of ash so our pores can breathe, so our bodies can breathe back the lives that we have taken for granted.

I will mark my heart with an “X” made of ash that says, the power to restore life resides here…. Hand on my heart, I pledge of allegiance to the only home I will ever know.”