Written by Ely Grimm | March 2026
It can be overwhelming to be in a job with immense flexibility, with endless tasks on a landscape full of neglect. As the part-time Stewardship & Facilities Assistant, I am tasked with making decisions about how to best proceed in working with over 70 acres to create a healthy and diverse ecosystem while broken glass is universally embedded in the trails and creek banks, and swaths of invasive reed canary grass are so prevalent that it’s all I can do to stay on top of mowing them back to allow visitors to hike. It’s difficult to know how to begin when the idea of doing more harm than good with restoring the landscape is a real possibility – conservation is a new, ever changing, and variable field with uncertain metrics for success. These feelings of overwhelm could work very well as a physical manifestation of my ecological anxiety in a broader sense. It felt easy to look at the task of planning restoration efforts as a mountain with no guarantee of success, and a feeling of it being impossible to accomplish alone. With ecological anxiety, I often feel like I can’t do anything about it as one person, and I often hear this rhetoric from others as well.
Working on the land can’t be put off, because at a certain point of spring, everything begins to grow relentlessly and can feel unmanageable. Beginning this job at the start of April, I had only a small amount of time to plan before the intensity of spring and summer hit. We already have regular volunteer days, so the only option was to start doing something. Throughout the summer, I felt like we were consistently playing catch up – rotating between keeping trails navigable and keeping the garden beds, prairie and woodland as weed-free as possible. Having to keep up with a variety of different tasks made it even harder to prioritize anything beyond the immediate.
Volunteers tend to weeds around Ciporoke sculpture
There is no quantifiable metric for success and endless directions to work in, and I often feel paralyzed in fear of making a wrong choice. We can only learn by doing, though, and I have realized that less is often more, and that there can be so much abundance if I are open to it. I was stressed about getting enough plants for the garden, and then ended up (without ever even asking) with more beautiful seedling donations than I knew what to do with. I was overwhelmed with getting seed for the prairie, and again we ended up with an incredible amount of donations and many people willing to lend a hand.
As anyone who spends much time in nature can say, no organism can exist without its many connections. This is why conservation of the many plants and animals that exist here is so important, and why it’s such a terrifying tragedy if one is lost forever. Humans, of course, also need connection, both to the earth and to each other. Human connection and engagement feels like the heart of what I get to help with here, and as long as I am helping create a space where as many people as possible can do that, I feel good. I feel so honored every day that I get to work with so many dedicated community members who are the reason this nature center continues to exist, including amazing volunteers, folks who attend programs, kids on field trips and visitors stopping through that I get to chat with. It gives me hope that restoring this space was important enough to local people that they created this nature center, and I feel that care and love all the time getting to be part of it. I still sometimes feel overwhelmed, isolated, or like I’m not doing enough fast enough. Usually when I feel paralyzed with these feelings, though, I end up with support that I never expected – even just in the form of hearing or seeing enjoyment of the space that re-centers me in my work.
Plants I view as weeds may grow fast, and are beginning to poke their heads up again, but the land also moves and changes slowly and with resilience – in the same way that communities and relationships build strength through mutual support. With respectful land stewardship, no changes can be made without years of careful observation, effort, and responding to unique needs and changes. I am glad to have begun to get to know and work with this land and community and to learn slowness and a trust in abundance, especially with many people that have had a relationship with this land and area, some for longer than I have been alive. I never know if a seed planted will even grow or be the right one, or if there will be interest in a program or concept – but all we can do is try, keep doing the work, and lean on each other. Since there is no straightforward and defined way through, we have to take a meandering path of conversation, experimentation, going with the flow, letting go, and thoughtful engagement. The only way we can do anything is by starting, even if it is small, scared, or unsure. It’s impossible to know if anything we do is enough – or the right thing – to save the planet, but all we can do is keep showing up and doing the work together.
Ely (center) and volunteers prepare garden beds for winter
