Standing upon the Shoulders of Giants

Following my forty-fourth birthday, a glorious reflection on warm friendship on the cold day afterward, a thank-you note seems long overdue and impossibly long. Best get started.

I just created a fan page on Facebook for my company, Tresala. Tresala is an abstraction for tree and salad. Tresala is a Limited Liability Corporation, a shingle I'm developing that represents purposeful landscape planning and design. Tresala, why not?

And thank you.

Thank you Gino Fordiani for getting the rock rolling in the summer of 1983. I love the small, aching scar etched in the tan leather of my right hand from the bowling ball sized stone I dove on when dislodged from the hillside we were preparing to plant God-only-knows-what into. Rock Lobster and Aliso Pier (before the storm waves tore it asunder).

Thank you fellow biologist, river runner and friend, Jim White, for trading back and forth the role of leadership as budding field biologists. From Southwest deserts, rivers both mighty and not so, trails, streams, reservoirs and mountains with and without skis, to Seattle and the Pacific Northwest then the dread Bering Sea and alas, Costa Rica's pura vida. Thank you, Jaime, for leading me to Doug.

Doug Sutton, you put me to work digging a hole in your backyard then gave me a longer and longer leash with your San Juan Mountain Nurseries. Thanks for giving me time off to immerse in permaculture. Now and forever in the back of my mind remains lodged Bill Mollison's silver bullet, "In Grave Danger of Falling Food."

Thanks to Permaculture Drylands Institute and the Lama Foundation in Taos, NM which preceded grad school in Conway. And again, Doug, thank you for suggesting I apply to attend the Conway School of Sustainable Landscape Planning and Design oh way off in Western Massachusetts. Thank you Don Walker & Randy Griffith for pointing toward Ian McHarg.

Doug, Sam, Yuriko and Joe Bullock - thank you for offering safe and sane moorage between wet sailings. Thank you Zephyr for demonstrating determination, courage and strength required to acquire coconuts from aloft. Thank you Scott and Manis in your days before Pangaia. Thank you Manis for snapping me out of my slumber and giddy intellectual stew at the sacred heiau where Pele and Iniki roar together.

Bill Roley for taking me under your wing and praising my design genius. Thank you for sharing credit on the mulch article and introducing me to Southern California's architectural smarties, for working together on site design processes throughout Southern California. Thank you for opening to me your juicy citrus home among towering eucalyptus at Sprout Acres in Laguna Beach.

Federation for Intentional Communities folks are right. Especially thank you for being mothering, women of the communities. Thank you Lois Arkin for demonstrating traffic calming and peace actions, for sharing your home and duck eggs in Los Angeles Eco-Village. Thank you and Mary for planning a route north, a trail through intentional communities leading me home. Thank you N-Street Cohousing for cooperatively tearing down the suburban fences in Davis and sharing the heat and wisdom of your elders in the otherworldly sauna near the chicken coop.

Alpha Farm consensus-builders: Bob, Sally and Amber thank you for playing with me and suggesting we live unapologetically. Thank you Caroline and Jim Estes for teaching so many of us about invisible structures we can agree to respect in community.

Spike, thanks for taking messing about with boats seriously. Thank you Lori Bertis for companionship in the wildwest of Taos.

Michael Reynolds, James Bell, the list goes on and gloriously on.

As Sir Isaac Newton said, "If I have seen farther than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants."