Summer reading
Our Community Matters • 18 •
Restoration BY JESSAMYN WRIGHT
I have three kids. Two of them are adults now, and the youngest is four. When my middle son was 10 or 11, I used to take him tree planting with a local volunteer group called Treeforce. We’d wander up in the early morning and have fun planting trees, looking at the river and chatting to people we knew. My son didn’t have many friends, but one of them came, and it was really nice for me to see him hanging out with his mate. We’d work, explore and enjoy the morning tea that Treeforce provided. Between the chatting, exploring, and eating I don’t know if we planted many trees, but somehow that wasn’t the most important thing.
rocks, and we got a whole row of guinea grass out of an old, unused road. I was going through a really stressful time, and I found hacking out grass amazingly therapeutic. But something bigger was going on. I looked at the pile of hacked-out grass – my son and I did that, together. I looked at the forest, planted only three years before by the volunteers – we are helping this forest. I looked at the kind, generous people helping restore country on a Sunday – we are part of a group of kind, generous people. I looked again at the forest, and thought about the birds, and insects, and air, and climate – we are helping. We are helping.
The years passed, and my son went to live My son decided he wanted a pick for with his dad. My partner and I continued Christmas. to go to Treeforce sessions every now and then. I remember going to Coles after one session – I had a shaved head at the time, and he had a beard, and we looked like haystacks, completely covered in mulch and dirt. Other Jessamyn, a former freelance journalist shoppers parted like the Red Sea to let us and radio producer, has extensive digital, through and we practically had had the aisles writing, and audio experience and has worked as communications professional to ourselves, which has never happened before for a range of not-for-profits for more than or since. 10 years. This year, my middle son turned 21 – he’s She started volunteering when she grown from a lonely child and teenager into a was a teenager, and over the years has thriving young man who is studying nursing, volunteered for the Wilderness Society, socialising, playing sport and helping out at Amnesty International, Playgroup Queensland and Treeforce. She is also a the uni’s community garden – and my youngest member of the True Relationships and turned four. I don’t know why I thought of Reproductive Health (formerly Family Treeforce again, but I took my little one and my Planning Queensland) Consumer Advisory partner to another of their sessions. The same Group. coordinator was still in charge. We weren’t Jessamyn has a Bachelor of Arts majoring planting trees this time, but weeding and in journalism, politics and history, and mulching. My son grabbed a small pick and is currently completing a Graduate we hacked out guinea grass from sandy soil. Certificate in Social Impact. He enjoyed trying to smash logs and lever up
About Jessamyn
