Ripple is printed on French Paper Co's fully recycled speckletone stock.  Ships flat, backed with recycled carboard.  Select "prints shipping" from dropdown menu at checkout.
 
We are learning what happens when we tug too hard at even the most resilient webs of relationship within our oceans, our forests, and our ocean forests.
 
Humans took too many from the American Pacific Northwest in the last two centuries.  Too many harbor seals, sea otters, and stellar sea lions, for their rich pelts and fats.  Too many orcas for our amusement at aquariums.  Too many redwoods which stabilize the soil at the ocean's edge.
 
The people of that landscape are struggling to recalibrate.  The orcas are eating more sea otters, in the absence of the larger seals and sea lions.  The urchins are growing their population and range, at the expense of once vast kelp forests and once teeming tide pools, now that urchins aren't held in check by a thriving sea otter population.  The kelp forest, shelter and food to so many others, is the homestead, and it's weakened, crumbling in places.  We must look at this, and care enough to hear what it asks us to do.  We must ask, what can we do for our neighbors, beyond the apology? 
 
We, of course, fear the cascade of grief that this ripple, if only we let ourselves feel it, will loosen in our chests, our bellies.  But we have more to fear should we try to ward off that grief any longer.  More to fear if we continue masking our grief with apathy, or distraction, or fighting.  An earth without our engagement, tending, and care will not remain livable for our species.  We put our children at risk, and theirs, when we choose not to grieve, and learn from our grieving.
 
Do not grieve alone.   Be a permissionary for others to grieve, and to care.  Ask for support, and for witness.  And learn to support and to witness.  No one lives outside ecology, human-bodied or anyone else.  We all ripple.  It is the way of all beings.