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Our Latest Conservation Collaboration Agreement

Our Conservation Collaboration Agreement program (CCA) helps us build connections between our community and nature that will last a lifetime.

Our most recent CCA was with Pittsburg High School and sponsors Diamond Construction and Enkasa Homes.

Classroom Experience

First, on February 8th, our Save Mount Diablo staff went to Pittsburg High School and taught five separate biology classes, totaling around 150 students, what land conservation is and why it matters for their futures.

Achilleus Tiu is the regular teacher for those biology classes, and he also serves on the Board of Directors and Education Committee at Save Mount Diablo.

Field Experience

For the next part of the CCA, more than 30 Pittsburg High School students took a break from the classroom and went outside with us at our Mangini Ranch Educational Preserve on February 23rd.

Video by Mitch Doyle

“There are few opportunities in life whereby we emphatically feel we are a part of something special and larger than the experience itself. Save Mount Diablo’s Conservation Collaboration Agreement program encapsulates and demonstrates how community can be prioritized by focusing on two of the most important variables: education and nature,” noted Jeff Stone, CEO of Enkasa Homes and Diamond Construction. Jeff also serves on the Save Mount Diablo Board of Directors.

“The entire Diamond and Enkasa teams felt humbled by the opportunity to work, learn, and appreciate nature side by side with the students from Pittsburg High School, and truly look forward to our next opportunity to meet more students. This program is an outstanding representation of Save Mount Diablo’s mission, work, and commitment to both our youth and open space.”

Restoring Pollinator Habitat

Everyone in attendance participated in a service project at Mangini Ranch Educational Preserve, helping us remove invasive grasses that were encroaching upon our pollinator gardens.

Thanks to their efforts, our gardens will be able to thrive and better sustain native bees, butterflies, and birds this coming spring.

Service projects like this help the next generation gain practical environmental stewardship experience and make them a part of our work. It’s an opportunity to empower youth to make a positive impact in the world, to help nature thrive.

In the Shadow of the Oaks

In a time when it can feel like the world won’t stop moving, it’s more important than ever to have the chance to take a break, sit still, and think.

Our Conservation Collaboration Agreement program includes a reflective solo during which participants sit in silence and immerse themselves in nature, a rare opportunity to spend time in nature, slow down, and reflect in their new nature journals provided by Save Mount Diablo.

It was a chance to take in the sights and sounds that might otherwise be overlooked in our busy day-to-day lives while contemplating their relationship with the natural world.

Everyone sat in the shade of Mangini Ranch Educational Preserve’s oak grove, and contemplated the following two questions for 45 minutes:

What is nature?

What is our place in nature?

Beatrice Caphart’s answer to these two questions was particularly poignant, a beautiful reminder of the importance of nature to all of us. Beatrice is an 11th grader at Pittsburg High School.

Nature is the gentle breeze that swoops by, nature is the green herd of weeds dancing by.

Nature is the heart that beats and the veins that carry life.

Nature is a body of wholeness that consumes one being.

The question of what is Nature is one but Rhetoric, because how can something this profound be summarized into one meek response?

How can something that reeks of this much life be linked to one smell, A being this vast can not be summed.

A being this vast is meant to be admired and awed, as its beauty has swept a pond in my mind since its arrival.

This astute connection of vast lands that Spread towards Corners of the world. In simple terms, Nature is life.

As we stand facing each other faces redding from exhaustion, as we descend this mountain. As we stand here in all our complexities, we too are products of nature.

We are an extension of the branches of Nature. Like the lungs, the esophagus, and all the heart but many extensions of valves that help our Heart Beat.

We are the extension of Nature’s beating heart, we help the heartbeat. Which clarifies our role in this mass, our part in this vastness.

Our part is to conserve, preserve, and protect these lands that we take oh for granted.

We should do our role. Much like the blood in our veins that circulates and serves the heart and carries nutrients throughout our body.

We should also nourish the lands we walk. We should never forget our sole duties as branches.

Our sole duty as branches should be to collect the waste in our waters, dutifully clean our streets, recycle waste products, and protect the other branches.

Tragically, Nature won’t stay vast and grow forever. Our climate is very well known to have fallen ill, an illness of grave cruelty and travesty. 

An illness as we know is sucking the life away from her veins, an illness that has weakened her branches and broken her roots.

We are one of the highest branches that have evolved its way higher up the ranks. Let’s encourage the new generations of spouts to bend their roots and hold together in their hands the roots of the Tree of Life. 

There were so many outstanding reflections written during this Conservation Collaboration Agreement. Here is a stunning journal reflection written by Destiny Medina, one of the Pittsburg 11th graders.

Words of a Dazed Man

Breath of my breath, 

Eyes of my own.

Cold, blowing winds,

seething fresh breezes.

Birds calling home, shrill cries of longing.

When will I be able to soar with you again?

Gentle smells of mist-covered lavender,

Our skies shared between seas.

 

I see you in everything, Nature.

You live within me.

 

How is it that you provoke me so,

I feel I’d never fully understand.

These luring woods you sway so easily,

Thrill bursts within my mind and heart.

 

Dew covered grass,

Moonlit heavens.

None surpass the beauty of your existence.

None even begin to compete with your expanse.

 

So unique, so tranquil, such enthralling moments.

It brings about the end to my sadness, 

Replace it with words that must be true.

Ones of care and affection, ones of emotion and love.

Whispered through the noises of the forest.

 

Could you be seen in the valleys?

Perhaps in the eyes of those dear.

Why have I forsaken such elegance,

I’ve trampled fragile greens, 

Searching for the wrong things.

All in search of something, something as perfect as you.

 

I have done nothing to gain such heaven. 

I have sinned beyond repair. 

But it is you who I pay the price for, 

Not you whom I repay a debt for. 

You are a prize, yet not an object. 

A treasure, but not hidden. 

A vault, but completely open. 

My eyes, even more, my life. 

 

You hold the keys to my thoughts, 

You own all that is mine. 

For I cannot even spend a day in this world without having every instance of thought on you.

 

When will I see you again,

Sol de mi vida?

For my heart aches for you, 

Only you.