This song is dedicated to the incessant chatter of my brain: the worrying, the panicked pleas, the scathing critiques of people and situations, the guilt, the shame, the plotting and planning and longing to be anyone but who I am, doing anything but what I’m doing, anywhere but here. It is dedicated to the bullying tactics of my ego, that would have me think that I am alone, floating in a frigid ocean of adversity, and that my very survival depends on the tenacity of my selfishness.

The title of this song is not to suggest that this is unique to westerners, however, when you see how less prominent it is in cultures where people live simply it becomes obvious that we are addicted to our distractions in this country. We pander to every whim of our egos with the mistaken belief that acquiring or averting what ever it is that we are fixating on will make us happy. A woman and her boyfriend whom I met at the gym referred to it as “indulging in our Smiegel natures”, which I think is pretty hilarious. And so we go on in that way, like junkies, our happiness becoming increasingly elusive and fleeting; our lives becoming a series of “means to an end” situations, during which we become spiritually bankrupt.

But my mind loves this. Without it, it would be out of a job. It only takes an interruption in the constant stream of thoughts, a true experience of the present moment to realize that the ego cannot exist there. It was only at this point that I began to view my mind with a little more compassion, the way you view a child who is throwing a temper tantrum. Gently, patiently and with all the love of an adoring parent…you grab the kid and put them in a time out.

Click here to hear the song!

By Cameron Gabriel

Restoration Forestry means working with nature to restore the world’s forests to their former grandeur and function. The forests are the world’s humidifiers, lungs, oxygen producers, soil producers, biomass producers and carbon cyclers. Forests are the basis for much of life on earth. Restoration forestry assists nature to heal degraded forests and bring them back to a state of biological productivity, biodiversity, ecological stability and resilience.

One way Restoration Forestry encourages forest health and resiliency is by protecting the trees most suited to local conditions. Scattered along the wildland urban interface (WUI) of Ashland, there are large, strong, old-growth Ponderosa Pine, White and Black Oak, Mountain Mahogany, Douglas-fir, Madrone, and even Manzanita. These legacy trees pre-date European settlement, and not only hold the hillsides and ravines together, but also maintain the historic memory of understory fires lit by native peoples to sustain their resources, such as acorns gathered by the Takelma and Shasta bands who lived near Ashland Creek. Encroachment by small Douglas-fir and dense brush has significantly diminished the Oak Woodlands and Pine/Oak ecosystems that cover much of the interface. Thinning of these more opportunistic species restores the biologically-rich components of the diverse landscapes that surround us.

Restoration Forestry also reduces fuel loads and crown fire risks around homes and neighborhoods. Large trees are always retained, and many of the smaller trees and shrubs that are 2 to 8 inches in diameter are thinned. This technique fosters the survival of fire resilient dominant trees, by reducing competition for moisture, nutrients, and sunlight, and by decreasing adjacent, ladder fuels that bring fire from the ground, through brush, small trees, and into the canopies of taller trees. A diversity of plant species and age classes is also retained, along with chaparral patches that are used by wildlife.

Lomakatsi’s Full Circle Schools Restoration Ecology Program provides teachers and their students direct hands-on experiences linked with local environmental restoration projects. This innovative program includes in-class presentations, field trips to restoration sites, study and care of native plants grown in local shadehouse nurseries and Adopt-A-Site field trips where students are actively involved in all steps of the restoration process.

Lomakatsi Restoration Project is a non profit organization, which develops and implements pro-active community based ecological restoration projects throughout the Cascade-Klamath-Siskiyou eco-region of southwestern Oregon and northwestern California.