Beaver Crossing
March 4th, 2010

Chuck Pettis and new Beaver Xing Sign
The beavers have started crossing Newman Road by Earth Sanctuary. A neighbor called and asked me to put up a “Beaver Xing” sign. Voila!

Chuck Pettis and new Beaver Xing Sign
The beavers have started crossing Newman Road by Earth Sanctuary. A neighbor called and asked me to put up a “Beaver Xing” sign. Voila!
“Felt like a child again. Walking through the trees in awe and enraptured with nature, totally free”
-Sheila Pack, Earth Sanctuary Retreatant
“It’s January, the changing of the year, a time for death and the promise of rebirth. Among the brown leaves and wilted fern fronds, there are hints of new life to come. I found it inside myself too. Thank you.” -M.E. (Earth Sanctuary Retreatant)

Palm Tree at Earth Sanctuary
At Earth Sanctuary, we have a 500 year plan to return the property to mature old growth forest.
What trees should we plant with 500 years in mind? The problem is complicated by the fact that at Earth Sanctuary, we have seen much longer periods between summer rain in past 10 years. Last summer, we didn’t get any rain for 2 months and then the rain was only about 1/10″. This makes it hard for a lot of plants and trees to survive. The trees that are surviving are the drought tolerant trees such as pines and trees from California like Sequoias.
A few years ago I asked some biologists what they expected the climate to be like in 500 years and they said: “Imagine parrots.” So, we are getting ready for those future parrots. We have just planted two Palm trees in the Earth Sanctuary arboretum as a symbol of climate change and our potential future climate.

The just-planted Ava Pettis Sequoia
For Christmas I got a small Sequoia tree from my daughter-in-law Kat and son Morgan. Morgan is going to make a sign to go beside it: The Ava Pettis Sequoia Tree, named for my granddaughter. Hopefully Ava will be able to watch it grow to ~100 feet in her lifetime. The new Sequoia is now planted at the top of the Celestial trail in the new Earth Sanctuary arboretum beside a boulder cairn. Sequoias seem to do really well at Earth Sanctuary and we are planting more of them this year. -Chuck Pettis
A story from a recent Earth Sanctuary retreatant:
After hours of trying “too hard” in my centering prayer, hours of waiting to hear the still, small voice of God, hours of sitting, piecing together scraps of discernment that may or may not be at my heart, I was moved to tears one twilight when I came upon the Fen Stone Circle. The tiny cairn with its offerings in the center opened me. “I want to belong,” I said aloud and fell to my knees, “I want to belong.”
Earth Sanctuary was featured in a nice article in Change Magazine.
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