2. Thinking Like a Community¶
Most of us who live in North Central Washington came from someplace else. Except for tribal members whose roots go back thousands of years, the rest of us either came from families who immigrated from other states and countries or we came here on our own.
Regardless of when and how we arrived, most of us were drawn here by an enticing mix of opportunities, hopes, and dreams. Collectively, when we came – from as far away as Ukraine or, in my case , as close as Colorado - we brought values, traditions, knowledge, and skills that have helped shape this place. That’s something we all have in common.
As newcomers, we’ve all also experienced the need for help along the way - help in getting oriented to a new landscape and community, help starting a different job and making new friends – help making this place feel like home, a place where we belong and can help make things happen.
To those of us in the Initiative for Rural Innovation & Stewardship (IRIS) this is where the importance of knowing the stories of success in this place comes in. Our sense of belonging, feeling connected to others in the community and to the land, grows in proportion to the stories we know and can share about this place – the story behind the name on a map, the story of how soils and water have shaped settlement and land use, the story of how people have cooperated to increase safety, access to education, recreation, electricity and more all make it easier for us to imagine what impact we might have on the community.
Charlotte Billingsley¶
Our connectedness to this place grows stronger every day we spend exploring the diverse landscapes of our region where the joys of encountering wild nature – from warblers and wildflowers to bats and butterflies - become another part of the story we know, love, and share about North Central Washington.
Altogether, the stories and other content included in the NCW Collections provide a common currency we can use for talking and thinking about the kind of community we want in this place. They serve as data or reference points that ground and inspire us to imagine possibilities – how can we build upon earlier successes to enhance the health of the lands and waters that sustain the diverse communities and the natural world we depend upon in this region?
We hope you enjoy sampling these stories and that you find many answers to this question. We invite you to share them with others and to add your own story of success that can help others come into this place.
As the title of this guide suggests, a hallmark of our past and present success is our ability to cooperate – to think and act like a community united by shared needs and values. IRIS has gathered many examples of how collaboration has shaped the region through oral histories and current success stories we started collecting in 2005. Some of those, such as the Gathering Our Voice interview with longtime resident and Orondo Fire District volunteer Gordon Brandt, point out how we can continue to foster this healthy habit even as our communities grow and change.
“The pride of Orondo was the closeness of the community,” Gordon explained referring to the area that extended from the Auvil Fruit Company to Turtle Rock in the 1950s and 1960s. “When somebody honked and waved it was somebody you really knew,” he said including people from Waterville who would drive by on a daily basis to jobs in Wenatchee or to work in the orchards.
“Now you might know five percent of them,” he said describing how the Orondo community has grown as orchards have gone out and riverfront properties including those at Sun Cove have been acquired by many people from the west side. “There are probably more people there now than there used to be in the whole valley,” Gordon noted.
Other changes, including volunteerism, have come with the growth of the Orondo community that now extends to Beebe Bridge. “People used to volunteer for so many things,” he said including the Orondo Grange, school board, and fire district. “And they would do it without expecting anything back other than satisfaction for themselves,” he added. “It used to feel really good,” he recalled of his years of volunteering with the fire district “because you were always helping a neighbor you knew well. Now probably 90 percent of the emergency runs for accidents and fires involve people that we don’t know,” he explained.
Getting to know the new community including those who came from Mexico and other places to work in the orchards, second-homeowners, retirees, and seasonal recreationists and providing them with ways to contribute has been the quest of the Orondo Fire District for many years. By 2010, their volunteer base had decreased from a stable and sizeable crew with experience in the landscape and knowledge of the community to one with less than a dozen people. They had succeeded in increasing their crew to 36 active volunteers by 2015 including a mix of men, women, young, old, Latino, Anglo-European, and others by building fun and social activities into the program and providing a variety of ways for people to help.
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“I’m very proud of what the fire department has done,” Gordon Brandt said noting that they have been recognized by other districts for having well-mannered, well-trained and hard-working volunteers.
Other examples of high regard for the fire district have come from those who have benefitted from their help including a retired fireman from Sacramento who sent a thank you letter and a check in appreciation for what the district did for her parents when they had a medical emergency while in the area. “It made our hearts feel really, really big,” Gordon said, “that they appreciated what we’d done for them.” They were thinking like a community and taking action to support it.
2.1. How does thinking like a community foster sustainability?¶
We may not always agree on “politics, religion or sports” but when residents of our region get together to talk about what kind of community we want to pass on to the next generation, we envision many of the same outcomes. We want to build, enjoy, and pass on a vital sustainable community that reflects our values, hopes and love for this place.
In IRIS we see sustainability is an outcome of good stewardship based on a holistic approach to living and problem solving that addresses social equity, environmental health, and economic prosperity. We view this as a community outcome that we can all contribute to as individuals and members of families, businesses, and other organizations.
IRIS has been exploring different aspects of sustainability since 2001, highlighting stories from the ground-up that show how our region is creating the kind of community we want by taking stewardship actions that involve:
Caring for the natural assets that characterize our region - the shrub-steppe, forest, freshwater and alpine habitats and the rich diversity of life they support.
Fostering a high quality of life for all people through practices that grow a sense of self-reliance, increase access to resources, and cultivate healthy businesses.
Cultivating relationships that foster trust, a sense of belonging, and collaboration – conditions that make our communities welcoming places that can bridge cultural and political divides and build a common vision with hope.
It’s true that we are better together, thinking like a community. We anticipate that you will find many stories in this collection that show how to get there.