An “Integral Ecology” Approach to Caring for Our Sacred Grounds
Hopefully you’ve heard: “Never go into the woods with a naturalist,” Ryan Gott jokes, dirt-painted fingertips nudging his glasses downward as he squints to examine the underside of a rock in the small creek that cuts through the upper part of our Baden grounds. “You’ll think you’re gonna go on a hike and you’ll spend an hour and only make it 20 feet into the woods, because you stop and look at everything.”
“Are you a little leech?” he says, with the same cheerfulness that one might greet a friendly puppy, turning the rock over in his hands before gently setting it and its leech residents back in the stream. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
The presence of specific aquatic animals, like the salamanders often seen in the larger stream on the lower part of the grounds near the tree path and labyrinth, is an important indicator of water quality. It’s something he hopes to investigate more as he thinks holistically about caring for the local ecosystem through the management of our 80-acre land.
This desire to care for creation is what drew Ryan to Baden, where he embraced not only his new role as our Director of Ecology and Environment, but also the spirit in which our Sisters have loved and stewarded these sacred grounds. “A lot of people think ‘ecology’ and they just think outside, but ecology describes the totality of the system that supports our life,” he shares. “Caring for the environment is caring for your neighbor and caring for God.”
On this sunny October afternoon, evidence of that care has taken root – quite literally – all over the grounds, as Ryan has spent the day planting a healthy variety of native trees, bushes and shrubs, each with a unique role to play in stabilizing, beautifying, purifying and nurturing our forest and all living beings within it. Pennsylvania Interfaith Power and Light, an allied organization that shares the Sisters’ commitment to protecting the environment from climate change coordinated the donation of the plants through the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s 10-million-trees grant program.
Planned by zone and purpose, Ryan mapped out where the new plants would live and set about getting them rooted and protected in their new Baden home. Dogwood trees near the front of the Motherhouse, a visual gift for our neighbors during their flowering time in the spring; Hazelnut, Elderberry, Witch Hazel and Pawpaw trees in the woods to nourish human and more-than-human life alike; water-hungry Buttonbush along wet, creekside areas to soak up and slow down rainwater, and Red Chokeberry shrubs, with their horizontally sprawling and hillside-stabilizing rhizome shoot-and-root systems along the edge of the Sisters’ cemetery and in other areas where the landscape carries a natural risk of erosion from rainfall.
“For many, if not most trees and woody shrubs, and honestly, a lot of our native perennial plants – Fall is the best time to plant,” Ryan explains, adding that while we (and home and garden stores) generally think of spring as the time to plant, the warmer weather brings its own risks. Planting trees, shrubs, or perennials in the spring may not give them enough time to establish their roots before the hot summer sun stresses them. “It’s just not as good for most things as the Fall, when the ground is still warm from summer heat and geothermal. . . So then actually, in the spring, they’re ready to just immediately pick up and start growing when it gets to the right warmth and amount of sunlight, and they’ll handle next summer better.”
Each newly planted tree receives a small wooden stake and breathable tube encircling it, protection during its tender time of getting its nutrient-rich root mass established. The root ball, Ryan explains, is below the frost line, and shielded from freezing by the warmth of the ground, which can be enhanced by mulching with leaves and other organic material. After clearing a space near the entrance to our nature trail just past the barn toward the upper part of the grounds, he kneels to gently sweep and pat the soil around a just-planted Pawpaw tree, every loving and intentional movement attuned to how all of creation lives and moves and has its being in God.
