I’m back in the Seattle area for a few months over the summer, recovering and enjoying being able to stand upright in my house again.
Interestingly, the room I had rented from a friend for almost 3 years was available when I arrived, so I am back in my old house, with some of my old furniture, even.
I’d had reservations about spending a lot of time here, given the reminders and ghosts around, but it seems as though perhaps I have indeed adopted some emotional recovery skills over the years, and it’s been more soothing and reclaiming than painful overall.
I’m working outside a few days a week, with a training program called DIRTcorps, Duwamish Infrastructure Restoration Training. It’s a unique and vibrant program in which people from the underserviced and largely disadvantaged South end of Seattle learn contracting and landscaping skills while actively reclaiming the Duwamish waterways and wetlands via their learning projects.
Last Saturday we did a ton of great work on a project I took a small lead role in — drilling lots of holes into 1/4″ steel poles — which will eventually be part of the largest green screen in Seattle. That’s my grinning mug on the job site above, along with Fedora (who introduced me to the program), and our crew.
I spend time both in restoration and construction as well as on an educational farm, which I get to eat some of the food from! I’m weeding and mulching and weeding and aerating soil and weeding and harvesting and weeding and digging holes and weeding and weeding and weeding.
This, along with being generously offered my old stomping ground again, have been very restorative experiences for me. And, I am FINALLY moving my body, after two years away from aerial, which was tough at first but so relieving once I got going.