what restoration means to me

I grew up in the hills of the Elkhorn Slough. Before I even knew what maritime chaparral was called, I was playing in it with plastic horses and Barbie dolls.

I am one steward in a long line of stewards and there will people doing this after I am gone. Some call it land management. Like the farmers of the Elkhorn Farm Dairy before, I too consider myself a farmer, "harvesting" Santa Cruz Long-toed salamanders, clean water, and diverse resilient native habitats. 

Management might imply control, but we only have so much control over this landscape. I focus on developing relationships with this land and developing relationships with the people who live here and already have relationships with this land.

In Tending the Wild by M. Kat Anderson, she writes about two diametrically opposed extremes regarding nature - leaving it alone or destroying it. But in between those extremes lies a continuum of complex and sophisticated interactions with nature. I believe this middle ground is where the "restorationist" might fit.

". . .both in the sense that he or she is trying to re-create complex systems that arise from intimate interaction between nature and culture and in the sense that in doing this he or she is beginning to create a culture of place - a culture that is capable of interacting with nature without destroying it."

Ever since humans have been here we've manipulated, shaped, pruned, harvested, burned, and weeded to get what we want from the land. I'm just one in a continuum, hoping to contribute to the health of the area.