To most people, mucking around in a marsh hardly seems like a spiritual experience.
But to the stalwart dozen participating in a Tu B’Shevat project Sunday afternoon near Muir Beach, it was near bliss.
Beneath brilliant blue skies and cotton-ball clouds, the group celebrated the Jewish arbor day, which officially began at sundown, by planting seedling rushes, grasses and buttercups as part of a comprehensive watershed management plan along Redwood Creek.
Rabbi Daniel Kahn of Congregation Kol Shofar in Tiburon, which sponsored the endeavor, met fellow volunteers at Muir Woods parking lot to provide some religious perspective before the work began.
Clad in jeans, workboots and a parka — the attire de rigueur — Kahn noted that “beginning sundown is the New Year of the Trees,” when “sap from nut and fruit trees will start flowing. So what better thing to do than start planting?”
Citing both passages from the Bible and books on ecology, Kahn revealed his passion for “eco-kashrut” and the need for people to connect spiritually to the world they inhabit.
“We as Jews have an understanding that we say a psalm every Monday and Thursday when we put the Torah away: `To God belongs the world and all its inhabitants therein.’
“We have a responsibility to take care of this environment, this ecosystem, this beautiful treasure that we have been given the privilege to share. Projects such as this help strengthen our connection.”
Rand Selig, the congregation’s coordinator for tikkun olam activities, said, “A lot of people have defined tikkun olam as `social action which helps people.'” However, he holds to a broader definition — including social action applying to the planet itself — and encourages others to do the same. Noting that “Kol Shofar has done other restoration efforts, too,” he said, “This is an area I guess that we’ve gotten to know a little bit.”
This was his second group visit in several months to the Golden Gate Dairy, an old horse stable located adjacent to the environmentally damaged Redwood Creek, where the planting took place.
The National Park Service, Marin Municipal Water District, Marin Open Space and California State Parks are working collaboratively on a plan to improve the creek’s water quality, which should enable indigenous coho salmon and steelhead to multiply and flourish, explained Tom Elliott of the Golden Gate National Park Association. Thousands of native plants such as willows, elderberries and rushes will be set in the wetlands for erosion control.
Before this effort got underway last year, Elliott told the group, the area just beyond the stable “was basically a manure pile.”
Now water flows, and the land is dotted with tiny yellow cones protecting the delicate seedlings until they are strong enough to stand on their own.
Slopping through deep mud from the previous night’s downpour, the volunteers — ranging from teenagers to retirees — wielded heavy picks to make the holes in which they would place the plants. They worked under Elliott’s directions and the watchful gaze of grazing horses. A chorus of songbirds sang in the distance.
Congregant Dovey Schneider, one of the elder statespeople of the group, eagerly dug in. “I enjoy nature and I definitely am interested in ecology. This was a great way to celebrate a Sunday and Tu B’Shevat.”
She brought along a friend, Louise Gilbert, who recently moved to Marin from Palo Alto. “I like their sense of social awareness,” Gilbert said of Kol Shofar, “and I’m actively interested in the environment. This is sort of a bringing together of my interest in ecology and the environment and Judaism.
“It’s a wonderful, social conscience community-building… with others who share the same values.”
Twentysomething Zak Zaidman of San Francisco had learned about the Tu B’Shevat project just the previous day, while attending a Jewish community event in the East Bay. A flier on the Kol Shofar undertaking caught his eye.
“I’m excited to do some planting,” he said. “I like being close to the livingness of the earth, especially if I can do it in a setting where other people are doing it too.”