Braiding Sweetgrass

exterminated. The land holds their memory and the possibility of
regeneration. They are not only a matter of ethnicity or history, but
of relationships born out of reciprocity between land and people.
Franz showed that you can plant an old-growth forest, but he also
envisioned the propagation of an old-growth culture, a vision of the
world, whole and healed.
To further this vision, Franz co-created the Spring Creek Project,
whose “challenge is to bring together the practical wisdom of the
environmental sciences, the clarity of philosophical analysis and the
creative, expressive power of the written word, to find new ways to
understand and reimagine our relation to the natural world.” His
notion of foresters as artists and poets as ecologists takes root in
the forest and in the cozy cedar cabin at Shotpouch. It has become
a place of inspiration and solitude for writers, writers who could be
the restoration ecologists of relationship. Writers who could be like
birds in a thicket of salmonberry, carrying seeds to a wounded land,
making it ready for renewal of old-growth culture.
The cabin is a gathering spot for fertile collaborations among
artists, scientists, and philosophers, whose works are then
expressed in a dazzling array of cultural events. His inspiration has
become a nurse log for the inspiration of others. Ten years, thirteen
thousand trees, and countless inspired scientists and artists later,
he wrote, “I had confidence now that when it came time for me to
rest, I could step aside and let others pass upon a path to a very
special place. To a forest of giant fir, cedar, and hemlock, to the
ancient forest that was.” He was right, and many have followed the
path he blazed from weedy brambles to old-growth children. Franz
Dolp passed away in 2004 in a collision with a paper mill truck on
his way to Shotpouch Creek.
Outside the door of his cabin, the circle of young cedars look like