Walkin' with Joaquin

Since the “cyclone bomb” in January , the rain has continued. March came in like a lion and seems to be going out like a lion as well, with pouring rain and power outages and c-c-c-cold temperatures that make the clueless say "I thought it was supposed to be global warming." The giant, mature trees that are now coming down now with heartbreaking frequency all over town—on highways, city streets, back yards, buildings—all over the Bay Area, are coming down for a reason. Stressed by drought, unable to withstand the rare 80mph winds, many are also at the ends of their life spans. It's hard to imagine this land without them all, but when they were founded, San Francisco and surrounds were treeless, rocky places. There was a tree-planting frenzy in the latter part of the 19th century, a cultural dream of a gentler future. I was delighted to discover, recently, that California’s Arbor Day was started by none other than our own passionate poet and planters, Joaquin Miller! He, I...

As part of Oakland's citywide day of service, the Berkeley Branch of the California Writers Club is again hosting an Earth-day writing event at Joaquin Miller Park. Join the "Wolf Pack" writers of the California Writers Club in putting pen to paper and "Howling at the Moonshot." As the weather takes its revenge, we need to continue to inspire and guide others in new ways to forge a new relationship to nature—which always wins.  If you are working on an earth, nature, or climate-related project, please join us at the Ranger Station in Joaquin Miller Park for a few hours of hard work. We'll have lots of prompts and ideas available, too. Write your letters, articles, op-eds, poetry, fiction, non-fiction, drama, science fiction or cli-fi. Come any time during this 3-hour focused writing window. Write indoors or find a spot outside to focus on your words. When we're ready to put our pens down we'll go outside to share our works, for our second annual ...