It was a beautiful ceremony–such joyful energy! Many people brought songs that lifted our spirits. Each person brought distinct energy, including the two children. One person pointed out the sound of the river singing behind us. Another person remembered to include all the creatures, trees, and stones, all our relations, in our Earth Exchange. Many participants helped us all envision a vibrant, beautiful, fully restored mountain, forest, and river. Finally one woman said “It is already done.” (By just envisioning it, the restoration was already complete.) In fact, bulldozers were working nearby to begin the physical “reclamation” efforts ordered by the EPA, so where we were, we could see the enormous mine tailings devoid of vegetation, the land being torn up again to remove contamination, the beautiful forest, the river rushing to heal itself. I noticed a lovely little white blooming shrub, lupines and wild pink roses among the devastation. So much resilience and beauty. Everyone helped build our RadJoy bird out of trash, dead branches and living things.

We wrote out our good wishes for the Charleston Earth Exchange for clear cut trees, and we also sent love and hope to the people suffering in Charleston after the recent tragedy there. One person sang a beautiful Lakota song for the trees crying after they are cut. We also sang to the mountain and the river and the sun (for the solstice) and the earth, and we poured water from a sacred spring into the contaminated river to heal it. At the end we sang “I’ll Fly Away,” and I imagined our RadJoy bird soaring around the world. On the way out, driving past miles and miles of forest and mountain destroyed by the enormous mine, we still felt sad, but it felt a tiny bit less desolated, as if somehow we had shifted the energy just a bit. We had connected to each other, and to the Earth.