Kevin Swift practices low tech process based restoration, which is to say, he uses simple tools, a collaborative ethic, and a lot of humility to coax damaged and simplified waterways into fuller expressions of their aliveness. This is potent, rewarding work that is needed everywhere.

The questions that led me to reach out to Kevin are perennial questions of this podcast: how do we act practically and expressively to embody a more well world? What struggles and sufferings of the world are mirrored in the ways we struggle and suffer? How does an enlivened and enlivening world reach back into us and enliven us?

Kevin explores these questions with all the humor, grief, rage, curiosity, and humility they deserve. I hope you enjoy this fractal journey alongside the "self we need to save: the possible human."

I encountered Kevin Swift—a restoration practitioner, founder of Swiftwater Design, who describes himself as a “two-legged beaver”—at a beaver conference in western Oregon last fall, when I was still working my conservation job. Among many excellent presentations by many humans lauding the lifeways of this continent’s most extraordinary rodent engineer, Kevin’s talk stood out for its sensory embodiment, pure grief at the specters of traumatized waterways, and pure joy in the work of coaxing these hurt systems back into fuller expression of their liveliness and abundance.  

This short new moon 🌑 Immersion episode—a sensual treat in its own right, and a taster for the full episode with Kevin, which will be out soon—follows our two-legged friend as he sloshes and hacks and paddles us into his most beloved restoration project: Tasmam Kojom: a mountain meadow in Maidu homeland, Northeastern California, which he and his crew of quote “mud-loving funhogs” have worked for years to bring back to life.

Just before Equinox, my family and I spent an evening with Bobby Fossek, Brosnan Spencer, and their daughter Meadow. These neighbors-across-the-mountains are the space-holders and weavers of Naknuwiłama Tiiča̓mna (Caretakers of the Land), an Indigenous-led organization based in eastern Oregon, serving land and community: the Native people and species of the Big River (the Columbia), and the relationships that have always sustained mutual thriving here.

These good humans, who do so much good work, weave many threads and affirm many relationships in this episode. They speak about weaving; about tending land and community and tending conflict; about deprogramming from mechanical rhythms and coming back into rhythm with land; about learning from the seasons and flowing with nature to shape the future we want for our kids.

If this conversation inspires or interests you, please subscribe, rate, and review wherever you listen; follow us @Kinward_Moves on Instagram; and subscribe at kinwardmoves.substack.com.

I’m so excited to share this conversation with Craig Childs—adventure journalist, desert devotee, and “transformation junkie”—on recommitting to earth’s rhythms; rewilding (and domesticating) ourselves in ways that are responsive and responsible; and opening all the doors. We know that in times of chaos and complexity, new orders emerge.

Craig drops us into this conversation by immersing us in a recent research adventure for his forthcoming (soon!) book on dark nights: moving from the brightest of nights into the darkest, with a friend, at the speed of a fat tire bike.

As you listen to this conversation, I invite you to investigate, for yourself, what might your right pace be, your right rhythm be, for finding a personal realignment to a cosmic or an earthly rhythm? What doors need opening in you? 

I hope a corridor widens or a map expands or a flow clarifies as you listen to this conversation with Craig Childs. To support the show, visit kinwardmoves.sustack.com

Genevieve Flanagan owns and operates the one-woman show the Urban Acre Homestead: an urban farm in Northeast Portland, focused on serving fresh, beautiful, and nourishing food to neighbors. The Urban Acre is a diversified small farm with vegetables (especially greens), fruit and berries, perennial edibles, medicinal and culinary herbs, and a fledgeling tea plantation. 

If you listened to our Practicum episode with Genevieve, you already know about her tea blossom tea and her gorgeous buckhorn plantain. This full conversation with Genevieve unpacks her ongoing dance-boss-intimacy with the weather, her long history of responding thoughtfully to economic and environmental disruptions, and her ways of making magic—and a widget—with exactly what Earth has to offer as the season changes.   

If you’re in Portland, make sure to visit Genevieve at the Montavilla farmers’ market on Sundays and get yourself some seasonally appropriate sweet and spicy tart and crispy greens. Just follow the vum vum vum vum vibe and you’ll find her! You can also get an ongoing glimpse of Genevieve’s work on instagram @theurbanacre. 

For more conversations exploring our existing and emerging alignments with life, please subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen, and follow @kinward_moves on Instagram. For perks and community, check out our Substack: kinwardmoves.substack.com. 

Episode cover: Buckhorn Plantain, by Genevieve Flanagan, used with permission.

Genevieve Flanagan is a resilience thinker, an urban farmer (owner-operator of the one-woman show the Urban Acre Homestead in Portland, Oregon), and is "not a practicing wiccan" — just an opportunistic one, we might say, since the pagan high holidays happen to map right onto the farming calendar.

This short "practicum" episode, which we recorded in person at the farm on Imbolc weekend, on a sunny day right on the heels of an unseasonable ice storm, is 1) a great tease for our deep dive with Gen; and 2) brimming with invitations to enchant your way into spring. Brew yourself a cuppa looseleaf and enjoy.