The big news from this week: I had a minor bike accident. On my way to work Thursday morning, I noticed a truck in the bike lane ahead of me doing road work so I began planning a route onto the sidewalk around them. However, I miscalculated the distance from the road to the sidewalk and when I hit the edge, my bike went to the right and I slid across the sidewalk to the left. I scraped up my left hand pretty well but had no other injuries. (There's a photo in the Google album if you're interested.) I got to work with no other issues and patched up my hand, using most of the band-aids in my first aid kit. I'm very grateful that I fell onto the sidewalk and not the road, that I didn't sustain any serious injuries, and that my bike isn't damaged.
Jumping back to Monday, Michaela lead a group of Shalom members on prayer walk for Oak Flat at the Camino de Oeste/David Yetman trail (you can read more about Tuesday's court case and the movement to #SaveOakFlat at http://apache-stronghold.com/). We spent about an hour walking in prayer, stopping halfway to share a verbal prayer, thinking about our connection with this land and the lands that we call home. For me, that conjured up images of maple trees, lakes, prairie, and farmland from northern Indiana, strongly juxtaposed against the rocky hills and marching cactus which now also feel like a home.
Friday afternoon our house was joined by the Presbyterian Young Adult Volunteers for our second vocational discernment session. We talked about creating a personal mission statement. In this process, some values that came to the top for me were family, justice, joy, respect, and graciousness and some of my active verbs were build, connect, love, serve, move. We then thought about the different communities or ecologies that we feel called to work in. This was a good practice and my mission statement will be something that I continue molding and working with.
This week it was in the 50s-70s every day. This felt like great March weather to someone from the midwest but for Tucsonans, I understand this is pretty chilly. But it made our Saturday removal of invasive Arundo much more comfortable. Andrea's work, Watershed Management Group hosted an event to remove arundo, a bamboo like invasive species that can grow up to 20 feet per year, from the Tanque Verde wash. It's called the Tanque Verde wash but my soaking wet socks and shoes would testify that there is definitely water in the river at this time. We chopped arundo, dug up roots, and moved it all away from the water so it wouldn't get carried downstream. After 2.5 hours and two tons of removed arundo, the group of 50 volunteers were rewarded with vegan burritos from Tumerico.
More photos at: https://photos.app.goo.gl/rFXtPMJf9GjWMsFd9
Heal well Cade.
You and your household are blessed be doing good discernment work.
WMG invasive species removal on a Saturday is impressive. How far out Speedway were you? Close to Douglas Springs Trailhead? Out that way the B&B Cactus Farm is worth a look around. North of TVW is Agua Caliente Park - an oasis-like body of water with many large trees, good birding, an interesting place to walk on flat land, or for a person in a chair, lots of shade, and a kumquat tree or two with tasty fruit.