Jaime Mathis and The Words

Sustainable is the quality of being able to continue indefinitely. It is woven into how we relate to ourselves, our families, our communities, our work,  a nd our world. Being sustainable is a concept that is, at its heart, inclusive because it asks us to consider the web we live in and how we can support and be supported by the threads that connect us to each other. Sustainability is the language of relationships. When I walk on the beach for example, I come into contact with the sand, the water, the rocks, the air, the sun, my thoughts, my feelings, my fellow beach visitors, the birds, the trees, and the plastics. We all occupy a moment in time and space where we are directly aware of each other-- how the wind feels in our hair, how casual conversation creates a sense of belonging and camaraderie-- and yet, there are even more connections beyond this instant that supported us getting to a particular moment at the seaside. And we may start to consider that we exist i...

Rhetorical questions are meant to be pondered but not explicitly answered. It's an interesting concept, considering that rhetoric itself is the art of persuasive speech...a method of communication designed to manipulate and change the proverbial hearts and minds of an audience rather than to create a dialogue leading to shared vision and action. The rhetoric of this country has long been to convince us that we are one people and yet, also meant to fear one another based on skin color, religious preference, sexual orientation, gender, economic status, education, native language or political affiliation. The message is clear-don't forget you're American (no running off trying to form your own republic or country), but don't get too cozy with your neighbors. Unless they are exactly like you. But not too like you.  And yet, new science shows us that we are all connected. Fractals, chaos theory, self-organizing systems -they all speak to the intricacy and order that ...

I drove south last weekend. Hour after hour led me further down the highway, away from my home and into another world that was about to become one. There is magic in being able to move across the land-watching the trees change from evergreen to oak, the sky shifting from grey and melting to a slow blue burn stretching across the horizon. Driving a road is not flying where the view is distant and pulled back. It is different than walking, every step an embrace between foot and earth. Driving offers both scope and meditation, relationship and consequence. And for me, on this sweep down the West Coast, it was a revelation. I slid over the patchwork quilt of the earth herself, noting the rise of hillocks and the sway of valleys melting up the sides of the Siskyous. I observed the body of the mother that sustains me and provides shelter, food and clothing. I saw the gouges made in her flesh to extract gravel, the trees burned and charcoal scenting the air with  wildfire. Lake Sh...

The internet is a funny place that seems to run on fairly predictable fuel. Survival. Any of you who have fallen into the black hole of Facebook or the rabbit hole of Youtube can attest to this. If a link or site produces some kind of adrenaline rush in your body, positive or scary, chances are, you'll see where it leads. But maybe I should speak for myself alone. Of course we all have different things that get us amped up. Maybe it's the recent antics of 45 or a debate on white supremacy amongst white folks. Maybe it's a pair of really cute overalls or something that just blew your mind on Pinterest. Whatever your bait, the interwebs seem to be built on triggering the fight or flight mechanisms in our brains. Over the last six months, I have been deliberately rewiring the excitement center in my brain, otherwise known as the Limbic System. But, you say, it's FUN to be excited and provoked! Why would I do this? Well, for one, when anyone's brain is being...

One Autumn I strolled with strangers Beneath crab apple and fuzzed quince trees And asked,  "Do you know what this is?" Their replies, Surfed the cooling winds, Mischievous hand ruffling a cat's sleeping back, "Perhaps a pearapple?" Meanwhile clouds shuffled overhead Scent of apples, Fermenting in the patching sun, Buckeyes dotting the ground, Begging to be palmed and pocketed. It struck me, I once considered this day holy, Week after week, Year upon year, The beauty of holiness revolving around Saturday, Shabbat, Sabado. And more sacred still, Those bound afternoons of trails beckoning- Of cedar and cataract Multnomah and Oneonta Oxalis and Trillium... Rigid hours softening Into seasons and senses, Time put back in its proper place, A salmon come home to spawn.

Growing up in Oregon City, Oregon, words like Clackamas and Willamette rolled off the tongue and stuck deep to bone. They were natural and comfortable, breathing out canoeing sprees in July or school field trips to the old James River paper mill. As kids we’d pack up in the car on Saturdays and head out to grandma and grandpa’s farm in Molalla or head over to Oneonta gorge on particularly hot summer days after church. Thirty miles north stood Celilo Falls, which we’d never actually seen due to construction of The Dalles dam, but my sisters and I begged for stories about dad driving up to buy salmon from the Natives on the weekend. We’d press our faces against the glass on long trips to Walla Walla and imagine the magnificent cascades roaring next to us, Celilo people perching on their platforms, waiting for rock battered salmon to leap into their dipnets. I invented a game called ‘Imagine When’ because of stories like this. Names and places had little conscious inspiration for t...

There are things you believe in this life, without having ever experienced them directly. Things like the pyramids being real or the Mariana Trench being the deepest place in the sea. Maybe even more esoteric things like Jesus having the power to reverse death or that you can be anything you want to be. I have long believed that the world I live in is alive and breathing. And not to be overly simplistic, but to quote Pocahontas "I know every rock and tree and creature has a life, has a spirit, has a name." Up to this point, I have largely relied on a deep knowing with sprinklings of imagination and wishing to engage with the natural world more fully. Like standing on a bluff looking over ancient forests and contemplating each tree as an individual consciousness with stories and experiences and a dynamic adaptive ability that allows it to survive centuries without crumbling. It's very moving and highly interesting to be in the presence of aged witnesses to the passing ...