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84 ChaPter three l Restoration of the Personal Heart Toward a Spirituality of Environmental Action I believe quite sincerely that in these difficult times we need more than ever to keep alive those arts from which [we] derive inspiration and courage and consolation—in a word, strength of spirit. —Rachel Carson, Silent Spring I t is a warm, late May day in Vermont and I am sitting around the kitchen table of Marty Illick, director of the Lewis Creek Association (LCA), eating a lunch of squash soup, tomatoes, and apples, all from Illick’s backyard garden. The LCA is a community-based organization that formed two decades ago in order to organize and educate residents regarding the restoration, protection, and care of the Lewis Creek watershed in central Vermont. Given the LCA’s reputation in Vermont conservation circles for working on watershed restoration from a holistic, cultural , and ecological perspective, I was meeting with Illick, along with two other women integral to the LCA operation. Stream bank restoration, sustainable forestry practices, water monitoring, land and wetlands conservation methods, stream corridor analyses, and wildlife tracking are among the restoration-oriented activities in which the LCA is involved. The particular weekend that I was visiting, Illick and others from the LCA were involved with a restoration project that involved removing an invasive plant, European frogbit (Hydrocharis morsusranae), from local lakes and wetlands. European frogbit, a nonnative aquatic plant, causes native vegetation populations and diversity in wetland habitats to decrease and is also suspected of diminishing oxygen levels, which directly affects habitat for spawning fish and benthic organisms .1 Frogbit was first observed and documented in the area in 2007 at a Natural 85 Restoration of the Personal Heart Heritage site in Town Farm Bay along Lake Champlain. By 2009 frogbit was estimated to cover 50 percent of the Champlain bay area. Removing frogbit is tedious. Crews of conservation professionals and volunteers work out of canoes and kayaks, as well as walk in the shallower water with chest or hip waders. The preferred method of removal is hand harvesting with a metal gardening tool and a small, long-handled bamboo rake to reach both individual and larger mats of plants. Kayaks are fitted with plastic laundry baskets affixed with bungee cords to the bow of the boat in order to contain harvested frogbit; canoes carry five-gallon plastic buckets with holes drilled in the bottom to allow water to drain. After plants are hand harvested into the boats’ buckets and baskets, they are then unloaded onto a scow, or floating dock, anchored in the wetland. The scows were donated by a nearby marina and adapted with walls and fabric to hold a week’s amount of hand-harvested frogbit. Marina employees donate their time to tow and empty the filled scows when they become full. Frogbit plants are stored on upslope land near the marina, where it quickly decomposes. The composted frogbit is donated to local farmers and used as mulch and compost for their fields and gardens. The LCA also has social and cultural dimensions and goals that are integral to its restoration work. Its mission statement reads, “The mission of Lewis Creek Association is to protect, maintain and restore ecological health while promoting social values that support sustainable community development in the Lewis Creek watershed region and Vermont.”2 Additionally, the LCA states that it draws inspiration from the principles of the global, religious-oriented “Earth Charter”: Respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, social and economic justice,and democracy,nonviolence,and peace.I asked Illick what she thinks it is about restoration work in particular that gives it the capacity for fostering such deep social, ethical, and spiritual values in relation to particular landed places. She replied, “I’m not entirely sure. But it is the most uplifting thing. We are really just high being out there in nature, working with a small group of people.”3 Restorationists such as Illick often describe subjective experiences of transformation and renewal that are formed through the process of working to regenerate damaged ecosystesms. Yet environmental writers, secular and religious, have overlooked these restoration-based experiences, either as a way to analyze emerging forms of nature-based spirituality or as a way to examine the implications of such profound and meaningful experiences for building a broader environmental culture. This chapter attempts to remedy this oversight by exploring the spiritual landscape of restoration experience, describing some of its key dimensions and...

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