the Acorn The Newsletter of the Salt Spring Island Conservancy Number 37, Winter 2008 Transitions: SSIC gets a new Executive Director Karen >> >> Linda Karen is and always has been passionate about the It is a daunting task taking over the job of running the environment. Many of the photos I found showed Karen on Conservancy: there are daily administrative chores and long the land; searching, observing, appreciating and sharing her term planning strategies to learn, and there is the challenge passion with others. You couldn’t help but feel excited and of trying to fill Karen Hudson’s hiking boots. positive around her. Karen’s success resulted from her ability to channel her passion and commitment into focussed thinking and actions. A very quick learner who initiated meaningful projects which often included partnerships with many on and off island organisations. The Eco Home Tour wasn’t just a fundraising event, it also contributed to the understanding of sustainable living for the public. Our stewardship projects weren’t just grant driven they resulted in the protection of land and rare species through land owner contacts. The respect and the presence that the SSIC enjoys in the community is the result of Karen’s work over the past six years: • From a small, cramped room, to an inviting, efficient office Linda in her office with wired workstations for four; Linda Gilkeson, Inside: President’s Page .................2 • From no stewardship projects to a record $114,000 in who took over as the Director’s Desk ..................3 2007; Conservancy’s Executive Library Program ................3 • From no employees to five for most of last year; Director this January, is Green Calendar .................3 • From 125 members to 910 and counting; probably not trying to fill Yellow Montane Violet ......4 • From a small society, to a large, respected , well known anyone’s boots but her own Stewardship Project ..........5 environmental conservancy; – but if anyone is qualified Natural History • From a limited budget and no assets to an organization to bring the organization Winter Pond ...................6 that owns land and has funds. through the next leg of its Events And wow, can Karen multi-task, she put us all to shame journey, she is the woman Calendar .........................8 (well me anyway). Karen never did only one thing at once! I to do it. We recently shared Inside SSIC wondered how she could be on the phone, on the computer, a pot of tea and talked Stewards in Training .....10 and be totally aware of everything going on in the office, all about her thoughts on her Book Review at the same time. new position. Sacred Journey ..............11 I’m going to miss Karen. I respect her passion, her Linda’s impressive Environmental Action devotion to her daughter, her common sense, and her resume includes working Day ...............................12 priorities. I’m going to miss her and I’m going to miss Chet, with the provincial too. Peregrine Falcon ..............13 – Samantha Beare Continued on page Essential Details ...............15 http://saltspringconservancy.ca/events President’s Page Things That Last In spite of our vows, we will let the link between Karen and spring day at Ford Lake when, blindfolded, he felt the cold, the fine and practical things she accomplished blur and quick strike-and-go of leaping treefrog, the day he tasted his fade with the detritus of time, like a trail too rarely traveled. first thatcher ant, a lemon spark on his tongue. In spite of our personal certainty tonight we will not long There is a grown woman who tends her woods with remember the way Karen strode with us through dripping new understanding and unquenchable love. woods to the crest of Mt. Erskine, or looked up from her desk “But your woods are so wild!” a friend exclaims. and smiled her democratic greeting, or kept alert through “I am as chaotic as my forest,” she replies. “The woods turtle-race meetings. are as orderly as my life.” Karen will be forgotten as I and thee will be, and that is “We witness under the same surprising sky.” as it should be. We live only in our own time. We will make This is your work, Karen. room for others. An oak and a fir and an arbutus watch sun and storm Volunteer wardens Terry Ridings and Larry Appleby building an and sea together, clinging to ancient rock, chancing the exclosure for Yellow Montane Violets on Mt. Tuam compusions of circumstance as all life must. To be given the What matters is that for Karen, her time with us was chance to take your chances: this is the first hope of being. one when friendships were made, when her understanding This these three have, because of you. of people and the meaning of community grew apace, when Don’t ask that we always remember, that neuron and her daily achievements were tangible and satisfying. synapse, disk and file, preserve your mark forever. What matters is that in Karen’s years with us our Know, instead, that your song has been heard, that it is burgeoning membership and loyal volunteers felt served, and always will be a melody in the Island’s grand chorale. supported, energized. These, your works, have that ineffable and timeless quality There is a depth, I believe, at which we and all life Keats must have had in mind: around us share an awareness, a memory below common A thing of beauty is a joy forever. memory, a mute but resonant partnership. If that is true, Its loveliness increases, it will never there is a permanent record in our community, as there is in Pass into nothingness, but will keep hill and forest, of Karen’s time. A bower for us, and a sleep There is, for example, a harum-scarum, boy in school Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing. who doesn’t yet know the many decades he will remember a 2 The Acorn - Newsletter of the Salt Spring Island Conservancy Director’s Desk Director’s Desk As of the first of January I took up the Executive Director New Conservancy Green 2009 Calendar position–and I have been running fast ever since to catch up with the wide variety of activities of the Conservancy. Apart Because of a special donation by Michael Levy, the from the enjoyable experience of having a job so close to Conservancy is producing a green calendar for 2009 that will home, I am really excited by this opportunity to play a part go on sale this spring in the Saturday Market. All proceeds in work of the Conservancy. I know it will take me awhile to from this calendar will go towards funding our Stewards in get up to speed (Karen is a hard act to follow!), and I ask you Training school program for 2008/9. to bear with me while I learn the ropes. Michael came to the Conservancy and said he was going In the short time I have been at the job so far, I have to do a 2008 calendar but ran out of time (running The Fritz been very impressed with the knowledge and commitment theatre). He wondered if we would like his images and the of our staff, our Board and the other volunteers that I have work he had done on the design and set-up, including a met. I look forward to meeting many more of you as we business idea, as a donation. He thought the calendar would work together on Conservancy projects this year. make a good fundraiser for the Conservancy. The School Something I would like you to check if you have Committee had been looking for new ways to fund the provided us your email address for messages is whether you School Program, so we said yes, and thank you Michael for have been receiving email from the Conservancy. We have a thinking of us! very high number of rejected messages coming back from The School Committee quickly put together a Calendar various servers, which may be because we no longer have a Committee made up of school program volunteers (Bristol current e-mail address for you (please send us an update if Foster, Claudia Pickstone, Donna McWhirter, Tangachee that is the case: [email protected] ). Goebl, Victoria Skinner, David Denning and Jean Gelwicks) It may also be because your spam filtering software is and went to work. intercepting the messages. This has been a problem for a Part of Michael’s business plan was to have green number of our members, so if you haven’t been receiving businesses sponsor each month of the calendar. This we e-mail, please check your spam folder. If you find the have done and are proud to announce that we have just conservancy messages in the spam folder you can designate about sold the entire year. Our green business partners are the address as ‘not spam’ or something similar, depending SSI Cheese, Moonstruck Cheese, The Salt Spring Coffee on your software. Company, Salt Spring Books, Harbour House, Foxglove, The – Linda Gilkeson Pinch Financial Group, Stowel Lake Farm, Gulf Island School District 64, Harland’s Chocolates, SS Nature Works, and The Fritz Threatre. We are pleased to endorse these businesses Education/Schools and happy they want to support the school program. SSIC Partners Again with the Library When we say “green” calendar we don’t just mean because the Conservancy is producing it, it is green. Or Last summer six of our members presented interactive talks even that our sponsors are trying to be green as possible.