- People -- Introduction
- Living Memorials: Acts of Social Meaning Create Places of Resilience
- People's Relationship with Trees
- Lessons from the Field: Living Memorial Stewards
Forest
Long-term Stewardship for Human Health
Sterling Forest Project
Site: Arrow Lake-Sterling Forest, Orange County, NY
Stewardship type: Non-profit
Initiated by: Orange County Land Trust
Maintenance: Orange County Land Trust
Land Jurisdiction: private
Purpose: The plan at Sterling Forest is to integrate the restoration and planting and maintenance of the memorial forest lands with on-going pediatric and family bereavement and conservation volunteer programs.
Reason site was selected: Arrow Lake is the gateway to the newly preserved 18,000 acre Sterling Forest on the New Jersey-New York border. It is an ongoing restoration project, an area that represents the New York City region's closest non-fragmented forest landscape. White pines are being planted in the understory of dying hemlocks.
Events planned for the site: Small bereavement groups are the focus of this project, but broad public access is possible via the nearby Appalachian Trail. The groups are brought to the site via an innovative partnership between the Walt Disney Company, Cavalry Hospital, and the Orange County Land Trust. After 9-11, a partnership with the New York City Fired Department developed to bring new family bereavement and support groups to these healing grounds. They held a September 7 ceremony "Common Ground is Sacred Ground" to unveil a one ton healing totem pole that was carved by the Lummi master carvers from a sister forest 3,000 miles away in Bellingham, Washington and driven across the country with blessings from other American Indian nations along the way.
Additional Field Observations and New Developments:
Sterling Forest continues to follow and build on its daily mission of bringing small groups to the forest for bereavement, counseling, therapy, and experiential healing. Paul Dolan connects the therapy and coping of the children with the resiliency of the forest, in presenting the project to them he said,
"Boys and girls, one of the most beautiful places in the world is the forest... We're going to spend some time planting these, so you'll understand what a forest is. If you look at the forest, it's a beautiful place. But if you look at it closely, you see it's pretty wild, there are a lot of trees that are knocked over or have fallen over from storms. But when a tree dies, many more trees also grow. The seeds from the tree can create new trees, light can come into the forest floor and create new things."
"What's interesting here is that you've got death all around you, dead hemlocks, and they're bringing life. It would be good to tell the children a little bit about how because these trees are dying, it allows the pines to have life, because they need a lot more light...It's kind of like the Phoenix rising. I always think of the forest as like the Phoenix," echoed JoAnn in our conversation.
Children from Calvary Hospital bereavement groups plant white pines to replace the dying hemlocks. The groups are supervised by teenagers that were former participants in the program--creating an inclusive program over a longer time-frame--as well as trained counselors. For the 2003 anniversary of September 11, they are working with the counseling service unit of the FDNY to bring children who lost a firefighter parent on September 11. One of the widows of September 11 who's husband was a severe burn victim who recovered and returned to work, only to be killed on September 11, has begun engaging burn victim groups in the forest project as well. Paul and JoAnn Dolan explained that they encourage participants to get involved with the service aspect and development of the program, finding that this long-term engagement can be just as therapeutic if not more so, than planting a memorial forest.
The Dolans continue to engage in partnerships to ensure the longevity of this forest restoration project. A local Bruderhof community--a communal people that are farmers and excellent stewards of the land--has recently begun assisting with the installation and year-round maintenance of the young pines. At one memorial planting, a neighboring landholder took part, interacting with the forest and perhaps imparting a sense of the value of this space that might be missed when compared with a developers offer for the land. While the Dolans have assisted in the preservation of over 20,000 acres of forest land that has been transferred to the state of New York, the creation of a multi-million dollar Sterling Forest visitors center, and the continuous widening and securing of the Appalachian Trail corridor--the ultimate high-traffic public greenway, they intend to keep this portion of the forest as a private land trust to ensure that their innovative programming will continue. Their commitment to Arrow Park is long term and their vision is concrete:
"We want groups that are interested in continuing contact with the land. We don't want day programs and people that are bussed in and out of here, we want it to be a place for people to permanently come and find a bonding and an interaction with the land. We think of it as a teaching landscape, a creative landscape, and a healing landscape," said JoAnn.
They are actively bringing in new partners, working to build in a consortium model of like-minded groups that will use the site in an ongoing basis for their three areas of focus. In terms of ongoing events related to 9-11, they are talking to family members about the next stage of this project and expect to focus on outreach and service. The families from 9/11 have asked if they could invite families of servicemen killed in Iraq conflict and Sterling Forest responded that they could. Also, a second Healing Pole has been carved and is being brought to Shanksville by the Lummi Indians. A third pole will go to Washington next year. This is part of the "Sacred Landscapes" projects, which the Lummis are involved with. They are having a second September 6th memorial event as well.
Paul Dolan discussed the significance of "living" memorials to 9/11:
"What's nice about this site, is that the World Trade Center site is going to be endless competition and fighting about the design and do you put the names of the firefighters with all the other names, and anything you do, people aren't going to like it too much it'll be too modern, or whatever. No matter what happens, its going to be difficult.
This year we had a much larger response than expected for this year's memorial event. There are over 106 family members, including 27 children have responded that they will participate in memorial tree planting this year. We have 25 volunteers participating. This will be an official memorial with the New York City Fire Department. Families only, no politicians, no press or general public. A family picnic will follow. Fire Department Chaplain will bless newly planted trees. Local volunteers will assist in preparing site and future maintenance. We are following original DEC plan using white pines, some lakeside rhododendrons, then wildflowers.
We helped developed a joint proposal from National Hospice Foundation and American Hospice Foundation, the only two national groups on bereavement...We have asked them to work together to provide ideas for a training center. This property, the way its envisioned will be small, hands on private space for families themselves, whether it be: children of war, conflict resolution, training center for hospice volunteers and workers, and then we just finished a science facility, which is already completed, an $11 million complex. It's attached to NYU, and that's more on the science, the environment, and the forest...We are also inviting proposals on arts, poetry, sculpture, photography, painting, and Sloan-Kettering has a program for patients that are rediscovering their creative sides after fighting cancer, and we're looking for other groups like that. We've had a dance group up here involved with therapy through dance. And the idea is that you'd have this array of programs that you could pull upon. And the last piece is service, everyone that's involved here has to do something.
It's a living memorial in the sense not only that it's a forest but because it involves doing things in honor of the person who dies. The whole thing we've been focused on here is that integration. That's really what motivates people to do lots of things. Even coming out of sorrow, people can do many great things. The man who created the Appalachian Trail's wife had died and he was in mourning, and came he up with the idea for a trail while he was off on a retreat right near here, and he worked on the plans during that time of healing."
