Mycelial Re-membering
The beautiful dance of lichen courting a Manzanita (Arctostaphylos spp.)~ one of the fire-resilient native tree species in California.
I believe Nature and Spirit are indistinguishable; everywhere at once and nowhere in particular.
Like breath, and like faith. You cant point to them, yet they're omnipresent.
They are in and amongst us all, pushing and pulling and ushering all of life into deeper expressions of diversity, resilience and adaptability with the ever undulating tides of time. Burning away any semblance of certainty with often abrupt and unsettling reminders that change is the only constant.
“Chance and Chaos are the parents of the permenance our short lives interpret as Now.” ~Martín Prechtel
Whether we cast our conscious awareness to them or not, Nature, Spirit, the regenerative forces of our Living Earth, have and will continue to unfold in cycles of renewal and regeneration as they have for billions of years; creating the holistic conditions conducive for life to continue to evolve and proliferate to meet the moment. A cycle which, as many of us are now remembering, inevitably requires the presence of death. It is from the surrenderence of life to death, that the new breath of life is brought forth.
Giant chain fern (Woodwardia fimbriata) emerging from a regenerating spring system on the land of Sprit Song, of which recently met te flames head on in the LNU Lightning Complex fires.
I want to begin by grounding in the deep-rooted story of the lands of which I write. Indescribably beautiful, fecund, sacred land nestled between the northern boundary of occupied Coast Miwok territory and the southern edge of Southern Pomo territory; peoples whom are currently represented by the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria. Today, this places has also come to be known as Sebastopol, CA.
To the original stewards of this land, I am honor-bound. With humility and reverence, I acknowledge the tens of thousands of years of your people living in right relationship with the animals, plants, soils, fungi and other more than human communities. It is these balanced relationships of reciprocity that have encouraged the coastlines, forests, valleys, grasslands to be the rich, abundant ecologies of fertile soils, foods, medicines and deep majestic beauty that they are today. As a newcomer and visitor on Turtle Island that has been nourished, receives healing and benefited mentally, emotionally, physically and financially from its many Earthen gifts, it is inextricably imbedded in my life’s work to take each step with mindfulness, humility and receptivity towards reparation. I acknowledge the grief of which the ancestral people and more than human kin of these lands hold that I will never be able to fully understand as a white woman of Northern European settler ancestry. And yet, I am here now, to show up and uplift the Indigenous wisdom of the land, humans and non humans. To learn from, listen to, give freely, and devotedly defend this ecology with all of my being while I am here. Shoulder to shoulder.
In an lamentable unfolding of degenerative ecological, cultural and societal feedback loops over the past century driven by colonization, industrialization, capitalism and the insidious cultural ideologies that they perpetuate; hot-burning, fast-moving, ecologically destructive wildfires (what’s now being termed ‘megafires’) have become an annual phenomena that the West Coast of the continental US (and in many analogous ecosystems around the world) have been facing for over a decade.
Here in California, we live in a fire ecology. Fire lives on this land, expressed in cycles of relatively predictable patterns, as it has for tens of thousands of years. We cannot wish it away, and we cannot rid of it’s presence.
Western colonization and the attempted eradication of Indigenous peoples and their cultural burning practices underpin much of how the unbalanced, destructive fires we see today came to be, and is an imperative part of the story that must be centered in any conversation regarding this topic. However, the reasons for an increase in these megafires goes deeper than any one person, place, race, corporation or variable. It must continue to be approached in a multi-generational, multi-disciplinary, multi-dimentional context rooted in decolonization and holistic ecological justice (see a further exploration of this here).
“Due to the complex, systemic nature of these issues, there isnt going to be a magical silver bullet that rises out of the ashes. There will be no single, linear approach to social, cultural, ecological regeneration that re-directs the course of climate augmentation and overshoot of planetary boundaries. Rather, an amalgamation of many small, local unifications and rememberings of our inherent participatory nature and inextricable interdepedence with the lands, beings, and systems that give us life.”
And as we begin to slowly crawl our way out of the shadow of old paradigms and work towards deep, integrated, systemic change, I can't help but look around through my developing lenses of remembrance and think about what we can do to show up for the damage that has already been done. While time passes in the inevitably slow and challenging cultural paradigm shifts, how down begin the essential processes of actionable reparation on a bioregional scale? To protect the lands and the waters from further harm from our messy human mistakes right NOW?
In the recent months, be it luck or loss, or destiny or desire, a team of dedicated Earth protectors and stewards strewn throughout Northern-Central California have been called into action. An act of devotion of which I can feel transforming my personal biases around wildfire and climate crisis, and helping to re-write my (and hopefully the collectives) pre-constructed colonial narratives of pyrophobia and ecocide, and encourage the proliferation of regenerative human-ecological participation.
Into the belly of the Santa Cruz CZU Lightning Complex and the Sonoma County / LNU Lightning Complex burn zones we go, to learn from, listen to and ally with our fungal and microbial kin; doing our best to do our small, yet purposeful part of helping alleviate the damage.
More specifically, we are working towards implementing bioremediation and bio-filtration initiatives in hopes of filtering, mitigating, degrading and transforming toxic ash runnoff left from man-made structures burned in the most recent wildfires. We aim to install erosion control measures like straw wattles inocuated with fungi to remediate this cocktail of concentrated nutrients, sediment and pollutants before it becomes virulent runoff with the upcoming winter rains. This runnoff will inevitably enter surrounding ecologies, infiltrating the watersheds and the lives of our more than human relatives.
Every being is connected
Water continues to be one of the most direct and indisputable teachers of just how inextricably interdependent we all are, and this toxic ash runoff phenomena is serving as an enormous wake up call to that very teaching.
We all live downstream
As human development continues to encroach further into wild spaces of fire ecologies, we are seeing a new threat emerge from this increase of wildland-urban interfaces. Large numbers of man-made structures are burning, and with that, an unfathomable amount of toxic residue is left as a byproduct. A typical structure fire may generate tens of thousands of toxic chemicals and gasses; some lower molecular weight compounds volitizing as gasses in smoke, while heavier ones combusting and condensing, remaining on the Earth as ash. This consortia of both organic and inorganic pollutants, along with increased soil hydrophobicity, creates huge amounts of material that has the ability to rapidly disperse, and when the first bought of heavy winter rains come, it does just that.
Here is a helpful visual aid illuminating the complexities of how post-wildfire runnoff can affect water quality and impact surrounding ecosystems.
This cascade of post-fire toxic ash runoff from the megafires is now being termed as a ‘secondary disaster’ and is a huge point of concern; for we can only begin to theorize what the long-term ecological consequences could be. We are still very much in the dark and don’t know the full extent of how these bio-persistent contaminants will effect surrounding watersheds and fragile aquatic ecosystems, likely finding their way into higher trophic levels in the food web via bioaccumulation. This includes but is not limited to the many, already severely endangered Coho and Steelhead Salmon spawning habitats that this runoff threatens to further jeopardize.
This growing concern has brought forth the budding field of smoke and ash science in an unsettling way. A decade ago, the demand for this type of analytical science wasn't needed in the many ways that it is today. What contaminats are we actually dealing with when cars, homes, appliances, household chemicals, lightbulbs, paints, burn? And in what concentrations? What is this doing to our bodies and the bodies of our more than human communities? What about drinking water? The environment and ecologies? When intimately interacting with a burn site, one really begins to ask these questions in a deeper way.
This work is testing and tedious. Working with complex systems in a complicated world from the micro to the macro, all within the container of unfathomable grief and disaster can tenderize the spirit and break open the heart in unprecedented ways. As I mentioned earlier, the megafire phenomena we currently face is a systemic conundrum; one that lies at the intersection of white settler colonialism, genocide of Indigenous peoples and their cultural burning practices, fire repression and psychological warfare induced pyrophobia, all equating to living in a fire ecology that has been mismanaged for over a century. And on top of that, the compounding variables of anthropogenic-catalyzed climate change.
As a white woman of settler European ancestry living and working on stolen lands, I acknowledge the depth of injustice that underpins so many of the ecological crises we face, and the dire need for re-story-ation. It's a lot to hold. And to sit in that awareness every day as we try to do the work of generations worth of healing can be taxing. But as ecological regeneration work and bioremediation can heal the external landscapes, it is also a practice of healing the internal landscapes.
All this to say, humans are not exempt from involvement when we speak of bioremediation.
Bioremediation can be loosely defined as the use of either naturally occurring or deliberately introduced microorganisms or other forms of life to consume and break down environmental pollutants in order to clean up a contaminated site.
Bioremediation conventionally includes 3 main approaches: Mycoremediation (allying with fungi), Microbialremediation (allying with bacteria and other microbes) and Phytoremediation (allying with plants). I propose in here a 4th, Sapoiremediation- allying with humans to regenerate ecosystems as well as addressing the dire need to remediate our own internal landscapes so that we may show up in right relationship with one another and the natural world. Human remediation of colonially-perpetuated paradigms, white supremacy, extractive, numbified industry, and other systems of injustice in combination with fungal, plant, microbial and animal remediators from all other domains of life is essential for holistic ecological remediation. We must allow ourselves to feel again. Remediation is rooted in justice.
Im not saying it will be easy, Undoing these multi-generational knots and tangles is the work fo the world, and, we have to start somewhere.
As an ecological restoration and bioremediation practitioner, my main job is to listen. To listen to the damaged land im working to heal and the organisms I'm collaborating with to do so. The practice itself really boils down to a process of coming into relationship and allyship with incredibly diverse communities of life that have their own wants, needs and agendas. As bioremediators, we’re serving as facilitators; creating contextual containers for the innate intelligence of the more than human beings that have been doing this molecular alchemy and healing work for hundreds of millions of years, and uplifting the ancient wisdom that Earths natural systems and cycles already hold.
This includes being very mindful of all the ecological variables involved in these efforts. A burned landscape is a fragile, susceptible landscape. The hot megafires often render an ecosystem void of much of its biological life both above and below ground. We must be very conscious of how we tread and who we re-intoduce into the scene. Much like you wouldn't want to introduce a foreign pathogen into a open would of a human body; working with local, native species in post-fire restoration is the key to prevent further harm and help the landscape heal in an easeful and regenerative way.
We at CoRenewal, and folks from associated grassroots fire remediation coalitions have been ruminating on this notion for some time, trying to decide the best approaches to this bio-filtration work, i.e. which fungal species to ally with for the initial remediation of toxic ash runoff. Being a team of mycologically oriented folks and applied mycologists, we are most familiar with fungal applications in remediation strategies. Having worked extensively cultivating, consuming and researching the edible, medicinal and famed mycoremediator, Pleurotus, we decided to ally with this fungal organism for our (what hopes to be first of many) remediation research projects.
The wondrous Pleurotus spp. have been thoroughly researched and published for their remediation capabilities, from their ability to use their extracellular digestive enzymes to break down PAH’s and petroleum based hydrocarbons to uptake as a source of food, to their ability to absorb and immobilize heavy metals. These fungi have been employed in post-fire remediation efforts in previous years, specifically noted in the the 2017 Tubbs Fire post-fire restoration work.
While there are many research papers, scientific articles, experimental evidence and insight out there about the remediation properties and potentials of fungi, specifically Pleurotus species, fungal-inoculated wattles for post-fire toxic ash remediation have not been thoroughly researched, and the efficacy of this methodology remains largely scientifically unproven. Most of these efforts in the past have not collected sufficient data and have been based on of theory, and trust.
We at CoRenewal are working to change that by coordinating the development of background research, experimental design, and data collection among groups of people who are prepared to install wattles along high risk waterways affected by fire. We aim to collect baseline soil and water samples from locations where wattles and remediation techniques are implemented, and where we are able to have continued access for testing and monitoring. It is our intention to use this baseline data to form a larger long-term study and that the extensive data we collect will provide valuable baseline information that could provide a solid foundation for future study and research. In addition, we aim to collect samples from a variety of installations to provide data on the use of a variety of differing substrates, erosion control technologies, and inoculants to biodegrade a variety of contaminants.
The fires have come.
Hundreds of thousands of acres of land lay blackened, charred.
A mass reset of the successional clock.
The rains are coming.
We don’t know when.
The time is now, and so it begins.
Over the weeks since the inception of the project I have been deeply ruminating on best practices to go about this work; The who, where, what, and how (feeling like at this point I have a pretty good grasp on the why).
Just the other day on a contemplative walk at one of my favorite local woodlands bordering the Bohemian Ecological preserve, a Spirit wink came upon me. A wild Pleurotus pulmonarius unveiled itself directly in the center of the path I was walking upon, almost as if it was saying, “hello! pick me! im here to guide the way”. I was a bit stunned that this fresh, fleshy being was fruiting in such a hot, bone dry ecology, even for a summer-fruiting fungus in this region.
After sitting with them for sometime in the bird song-filled sanctuary of our shared presence, speaking to them my intention of harvest, what their journey through this work may look like, and asking for feedback and consent, I heard a loud, clear, yes. We are about to put them up against potentially hundreds of toxic chemicals in which they've never been exposed to before; getting permission felt absolutely essential. I gratefully harvested them, and with their delicate yet firm flesh, made several sterile tissue cultures; propagating their body forth into the world. They’re some of the fastest running, most excitable Pleurotus cultures ive ever worked with; their mycelium completely overgrowing the surface of the agar within just days. Incredible decentralized expressions of conscious awareness. Feeling so honored and humbled to work with them in this intimate wayI approriately named them, Phoenix.
Making sterile tissue cultures from a local Pleurotus pulmonarius.
Local Pleurotus pumlonarius mycelium running on agar plate (1 week)
Local Pleurotus pumlonariu mycelium running on agar plate (1 week)
Local Pleurotus pumlonariu mycelium running on agar plate (1 week)
We will use this bioregionally native strain for remediation purposes in the extended Sonoma County-based efforts. As mentioned briefly earlier, this powerful white-rot fungal remediatior has been researched extensively for their enzymatic capacity of degrading organic pollutants such as PAH’s, PCB’s, dioxins, and absorbing/transforming non-organic pollutants like heavy metals.
We aim to grow out their mycelium in straw and woodchip filled bio-wattles (a common erosion-control measure) which will be intentionally staged along waterways as well as ‘capping’ the burned structures themselves, serving as biological filters to catch and mitigate as much of the biopersistent pollutants in toxic ash runoff as possible before it has a chance to cause additional unprecedented damage to surrounding ecologies.
With these inoculated wattles, we will be sampling soil and water, tracking the concentration of heavy metal absorption over time as the rains fall, as well as measuring heavy metal levels in the fruiting bodies of the fungi and they grow and concentrate sequestered heavy metals in their mushrooms throughout the next months. We will also be testing for soil stable aggregate concentration and microbial community analysis as these both play large roles in determining soil health, soil biology, soil microbial succession, soil stability and subsequent erosion/landslides.
Some other areas of this research and implementation will include inoculating wattles with microbial soil communities from unburned reference ecosystems. These native soil inoculum full of IMO’s (Indigenous Microorganisms) such as bacteria, protozoa and mycorrhizal/saprotrophic fungi not only act as a multi-kingdom approach to remediation by combining the synergistic effects of myco and microbial remediation, but also serve as an inoculum for re-introducing biology back to the soil of burned landscapes which are often left rendered completely inert by the intensity of the hot burning mega fires. See Mia R. Maltz, Ph.D. research in post-fire microbial inoculation for more information about this incredible work and reseach.
Iron-oxidising bacteria can contribute to immobilising cadmium in soil. © Kappler, University of Tübingen
We also hope to incorporate more long-term successional remediation aspects into this work by incorporating vegetation for phytoremediation and plant community re-establishment. For example, I am exicted about the potential of using live, native willow propagules as ‘living stakes’ for securing wattles in burned riparian areas, and implementing native seeds of pioneer-species to help further stabilize soil and encourage the successional return of soil biology.
https://www.ernstseed.com/products/bioengineering-materials/
These multi-dimensional approaches render more challenging methodologies to measure and track in a scientifically sound way due to the presence of many complex ecological variables. Nevertheless, its greatly exciting to think of these long-term and ecologically holistic approaches, in which we hope to create some robust and replicable experimental designs and implementation strategies.
All of this being said… I have to continuously train myself to stop, breathe deep and take long, long pauses. Remembering to return to the deep, embodied knowing that the land itself will regenerate... for that is its inherent nature. None of this work intends to perpetuate the saviorism mentality of ‘we will save the world’ but more, hopes to uplift the believe that we can do our part to be an imperative and regenerative participant in its healing.
Statue of Quan Yin, the the bodhisattva of great compassion; one of the few remaining totems from the land of Spirit Song.
Purpose comes like a wave sometimes… or a fire. Crashing upon us from out of the blue, or in this case a dynamic, green forest, and directing our course into the mystery with the force of the Earth and winds and moon.
As we continue to sit in the hot seat of the profound uncertainties of the time, may we continue trusting deeply in the process and let the fires be our teachers and guides. May we greive, heavily. May we continue trusting in the wisdom and abilities of the fungi and plants and microbes to help heal. May we trust, more now than ever, in the cycles of death, decay, renewal and regeneration, and ultimately, in the grand intelligence of nature to continue to do the mysterious, magical and often misunderstood work of creating the conditions conducive for all of life to thrive.
Please reach out directly if you’d like to know more about anything that was mentioned in this piece, if would like to get involved in this work, or if you/anyone you know have been affected by fire and are interested in supporting bioremediation work and research: Taylorleelyn@gmail.com
Get connected & stay updated on CoRenewals post-fire bioremediation research and projects here:
Please consider donating!
Get involved via these Facebook groups:
Fire Remediation Action Coalition
CZU Fire Remediation Team
Sonoma County Post-Fire Ecological Remediation Allies
Learn more about this work and the benefits of bioremediation in this recent interview I did with Social350:
https://socal350.org/ecojustice-radio-on-kpfk-90-7-fm-in-los-angeles/