Category: Festival

Nobody tells you when you decide to save some beavers that things are going to change dramatically. I mean, how could they? We’re just talking about a handful of rodents, and the whole thing will be over in a few weeks. Or months. It’s harder than you expect. A lot harder. So you try to make the job a little easier by starting a non profit to carry the load and throwing a festival to tip the scales in the public eye. You imagine that it’s  like planting a tree, lots of tending for the first 6 weeks or so and then it will lay down deep tap roots and tend itself.

Nobody pulls you aside and says, listen kiddo, you’re taking on something really, really big. I know it seems like fun now. But it will take less time than you think to completely transform the way your life looks. Down to the last detail of when you wake up, what’s in your living room  and who you talk to. And you have no idea how much of you it will consume. Honestly.

And then there are these vibrating crystal days like Monday, where the first thing you do in the morning is connect with a favorite reporter who wants to cover the festival, the button project, and the importance of having a major wildlife photographer on hand to teach other people about beavers, and as the day unfolds you arrange a meeting with her editor who wants to profile your work in a feature before the festival, which is really, really good. While you’re finishing the display board for the jewelry in the silent auction, you find you have to repair a blunder you made while trying to be polite that ended up causing possible harm to people you never met, and after you fling about trying to correct the harm, you get reassured by the people who noticed the mistake in the first place that everything is fine now. the mini-crisis actually made two different forces connect that were unaware of each other and that could turn out very, very good for beavers. Oh. Okay, then. Meanwhile you manage to wheedle three companies into arranging their service for the festival more conveniently for your needs without a surcharge, call the printer about the brochures, confirm the fiddlers and the solar unit, and contact everyone you know with children about Saturday.

And finally, when the mail arrived it has a grant from Martinez Kiwanis.

I realized in the buzzy hum of yesterday, that there are parts of all this work I like.  There are parts of all this that feel just right. Like I’m using every conceivable piece of whatever talent I might have in just the right way. The funny thing is that there are days like today in my professional life, when you spend all day on the phone with CPS or Probation and have to talk your way up the ladder to get your patient into a different placement, or into the hospital, or blessed with another chance. But those days, when they come, are unbelievably draining. Maybe not in the moment, but afterwards. I always feel later like I could sleep for a week. Maybe because someone’s life is at stake and in the moment you are the only one who can help.

It’s all very different. But familiar.

Anyway, I’m off this morning for an interview with the editor. I heard last night that  Suzi had an excellent conversation with the freelance reporter, Jennifer Shaw, who wrote the great article last year. So I’m expecting another wonderful feed to the festival this year, and a great reminder in the public eye about the importance of beavers.

Which is the point.

Whenever there’s a good day like yesterday a part of me crouches in panic that something awful is coming. I’ll let you know if it does. But for now I have to do a thank you note for Kiwanis. They have been so very good to us over the years! I have said before and I’ll probably say again, that all the nice people in Martinez belong to Kiwanis. (Aand all the other ones belong to Rotary.)