The Year We Shoveled Horse Shit For Valentine's Day
15,000 years ago the Missoula floods broke the Columbia River Basin ice dams and poured fertile layers of silt from Spokane all the way down to the Willamette Valley where I grew up. My favorite farms still grow their produce in soil rich with glacial melt from Montana. I don’t know much about geological sedimentation but I know it’s good for crops.
Some 7,000 years after that, a volcano erupted in the Pacific Northwest, exploding pumice and ash all over Oregon. Mount Mazama stood 12,000 feet tall before it collapsed. We don’t think of volcanoes as living things that grow but geologists do. Mount Mazama had been growing for half a million years before the lava rich with silica erupted a final time, its last cataclysm. The caldera it left in its wake became the deepest lake in the U.S. Residual eruptions created a platform we now call Wizard Island – it peaks from Crater Lake, whose stark beauty cannot be underestimated. The blue is so deep and clear that even colorful synonyms like “cerulean” can’t really prepare you for the first time you experience it.
And somewhere in the late 2000s, about 125 miles away, an Army brat and a Midwest transplant brought their own gloves and hand trowels, per the email details, to the Long Tom Watershed. I don’t remember the year but I remember how cold and damp it was, the kind of damp you can smell — soggy and mossy. Every nearby creek and two rivers empty into the Fern Ridge Reservoir, surrounded by swampiness and intermittent stands of trees. Once flooded, once covered in volcanic ash, this massive valley is prone to erosion. So we were there to plant trees.
What waterlogged nature lover wouldn’t want to plant trees for Valentine’s Day? It is a life-giving act. And taking a break from the warm and cozy comfort of our indoor life always makes us appreciate it more.
A group of volunteer do-gooders had gathered in the fog and mist on a weekend morning, noses running, and got our instructions. Those with big shovels would be digging the holes. The ones with hand trowels would be scooping up horse shit in the pastures next to the riparian zone and carrying five-gallon buckets of it to mix with potting soil and pack the saplings into their new homes.
They gave us armloads of little saplings, native trees that would help prevent soil erosion while strengthening the area as a wildlife habitat, homes for the cormorants and egrets, herons and bluegill, largemouth bass, and trout. The birds and the fish would thrive alongside the kayakers and anglers, the birders, and the stand-up paddle boarders.
We took turns with different tasks. I didn’t do well with the bigger shovels, jumping on them like pogo sticks without springs and trying to use my weight to dig holes deep enough for the root ball and soil and fertilizer. So I spent the morning shoveling shit instead. Scooping it into the bucket, dumping it out of the bucket. Next load in, carry it to the big holes, unload, and pack it gently down around the filigree of the young roots.
With cold wet hands and shit-and-mud-caked shoes, I chuckled. I don’t even remember which shoes I wore that day. Having always been a sort of cynical idealist I realized a day like this was the perfect example of choosing your perspective in life. I could say that my partner made me shovel horse shit on Valentine’s Day in the cold and the rain. Or I could say that he knew and understood my love for plants and animals and found a beautiful, non-Hallmark, non-foil balloon way for us to do something loving on one of the most manufactured holidays hijacked for profit. Both versions are true stories.
We planted trees in a place I will always call home. The coffee was tepid but the company was good. They had donuts. I thought about lines from my favorite Wendell Berry poem all morning.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
So if you feel compelled to celebrate love on a random date on the calendar there are some beautiful ways to do that without buying those chalky candy hearts or schmaltzy cards with bot-generated sentiments. Who can read that much gold-embossed cursive anyway?
See if your art museum is offering any events. Volunteer to walk dogs together at your local animal rescue. Do an overnight shift at a warming center for the homeless. Read to cats at your local humane society.
Doing can build more intimacy than buying.
So plant something you will not live long enough to harvest. Giving is one of the most loving things we can do.
And as Wendell Berry says, Love the world.
Originally published at P.S. I Love You’s, “What’s Love Got to Do With It” collaboration with The Writing Cooperative, February 14th, 2019