In honor of the 15th Anniversary of Radical Joy’s Global Earth Exchange, my dear friend Mary Dufty and I went to Savage Neck Dunes Natural Area Preserve on the Chesapeake Bay.

It felt like a circle coming complete! Trebbe Johnson was first here in 2009, the year the Earth Exchanges were birthed. In memory of that visit with Trebbe, we walked in silence along the half mile path through the rare maritime forest. I couldn’t help but compare how things had changed over the past fifteen years. The postage stamp sized parking lot was filled with cars, the trails were marked with educational signage, roots were exposed from feet trodding the paths, new ropes had been installed to keep visitors from climbing the fragile dunes. This precious place that was once a well-kept secret with locals was now well-known and needed more protection than ever. And it is still breathtakingly beautiful. The trail ends with a spectacular view of the Chesapeake Bay, perfect this day with white capped ripples of waves meeting the shore.

For our Earth Exchange we found a makeshift bench and began by reading from Trebbe’s book, “Radical Joy for Hard Times: Finding Meaning and Making Beauty in Earth’s Broken Places.” The second chapter, “Who Gets to Cry?”, begins with the story of Trebbe’s visit to Savage Neck and the endangered tiger beetle and the battle against development. We looked around and wondered how any tiger beetles could possibly survive the fast-paced erosion and constant inundation of the tides. (Luckily a few are still surviving the onslaught.) Mary has been deeply grieving the loss of the water and land she knew from childhood summers on the Bay. We talked for several hours sharing stories about time spent on the Bay, about friends and family and life’s challenges and victories. And we talked about the dangers threatening the Bay, all the while the sun sparkled on the waves.

Our Rad Joy bird presented itself to us in the form of an exposed tree trunk. The eroded shape looked like a bird flying out of the earth – the remnants of the trunk making the beak aimed at the sky and what was left of its roots stretched out to the side like wings. A drift wood phoenix in this liminal place giving testament to the shifting space between life and death, water and land. We then noticed a group of three people huddled at the water’s edge, one of the women quite frail. Their tender moments seemed to epitomize our ceremony’s energy of failing health being attended to by the loving presence of dear friends.

We concluded our time at the Bay by reading the entry from the 2015 Global Earth Exchange we did for the Chesapeake Bay that’s quoted in “You’ve Made the Earth More Beautiful! 10 Years of Global Earth Exchanges.” The poem still captures the “both/and” of the Bay – accepting that its strife and its beauty, like life’s grief and joy, can coexist equanimity.

We walked back to the car, marveling at the exquisite colors. What had started with a solemn silent walk was now a chatty lightness. As we drove off, Mary said, “I feel a deep sense of contentment and of being one with the Universe!”

Thank you Global Earth Exchange! Thank you, Trebbe, for fifteen years of making beauty and finding radical joy at wounded places!

Photo below: Trebbe watching tiger beetles, Savage Neck Dunes, 2009