Refuge Complex News & Events June 2022

Celebrate and navigate change - Together as a community

June always brings an increased feeling of change to our communities. We are saying goodbye to another spring, another school year, and for some, joyous transitions in the form of graduations, weddings, and retirements. We are saying hello to the possibilities of summer, returning to our favorite outdoor spaces and activities, and to growth all around us. As spring transitions into summer, we celebrate the changes in plants, wildlife, and ourselves. Change, the thing we so often resist and recoil from becomes a joyous adventure.

Your local refuges are places of natural and joyous change as well. Some changes we are accustomed to and find comfort in – the budding of long-dormant trees, hatching and raising of young birds, and the cycles of wetlands filling and drying. Even the seasonal changes in human activity, like the regular opening of beloved trails, can create a familiar warmth in us. These cycles allow us to feel stable while celebrating change in ourselves as we grow.

There are also unfamiliar changes to both celebrate and navigate. Our families and communities are getting larger, bringing amazing diversity in thought and creativity. This also overwhelms the senses with more people and new ideas than we are used to. Large restoration projects such as the Steigerwald Lake Reconnection or the Ridgefield Oak Release bring so much positive change for wildlife, yet the difference is so big it can be a shock to the system. Changes like this bring shifts in long-lived routines. Sometimes we find that those scenes that we have so long depended on to bring us peace have changed drastically. Even when we completely understand the need for change, it is still hard because it is forcing adjustments to the consistency that our brains rely on to feel safe.

Change is scary and we are wired to avoid it. We are also wired to come together to weather it, understand it, and thrive in it. As we see change happening in human and wildlife populations, we look to make changes in the ways that serve all species. Those can be adventures that we embark on together so we can create new scenes of safety for ourselves and others.  These are the changes that wildlife needs us to make for their survival, that communities depend on for continued and increased quality of life, and that younger generations will depend on. Just like those graduations, births, weddings, and retirements, changes in how we connect to nature and to other humans is a joyous change that brings life and growth to everything we do.

For staff, partners, interns, and volunteers this June brings something we have not had in over two years – real togetherness and opportunities for relationship building with you and our communities. So I challenge myself and those I lead to ask ourselves when we notice fear present itself in the face of change, “What opportunity is being presented to me to leave a legacy of growth?” Growth like the wetlands as they are dried and refilled, like the young cranes that have found safety in a place not familiar to them for many generations, to the young families that are discovering refuges as places they can see as safe and welcoming. These beautiful changes will continue because of the communities that support the growth of our interconnected ecosystem, with humans as an essential part.

-Josie Finley, Visitor Services Manager, Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge Complex