Mutual Aid leaders are this year’s award winners

Editor’s note: Mara Schoner and Mark Yardas are the 2021 recipients of the Ernie Maxwell Community Spirit Award through community votes. Below is their response to learning of the award:

First, what a surprise and an honor — we didn’t even know we were nominated. We share this award with every single member of the Mountain Communities Mutual Aid network who offers administrative or hands-on support, donations or makes a request for food, goods or services. Together, all these requests and offerings make the mutual aid network sing.

April 2020: Imagine riding in a caravan of pick-up trucks and minivans with a bunch of wholehearted local folk you’ve just met. You’re cruising through Garner Valley as the spring wildflowers are blooming and big white clouds drift overhead. You’re on your way to pick up food boxes that someone ordered through a little church in Anza, and when you get there the food looks … surprisingly good. Welcome to the mutual aid experience — it can feel like you’re participating in a miracle.

This is the power of human collaboration. When we join together in common cause — with our intelligence, communication skills and technological tools — watch out. Humans are capable of accomplishing the most tender, generous acts of loving kindness.

We also need to develop our sensemaking skills, our inner compasses and our sensitivity to the needs and divergent viewpoints of others outside our immediate circles of belonging. Together these capacities can aid us in effectively responding to the enormously complex challenges of this unique, pivotal moment in human history.

We like to imagine Betty and Ernie Maxwell meeting for the first time in the rumble seat of a Model A, each of them possessing a creative, ambitious spirit. They were both individualistic and community minded. Betty developed a concern with our inner dimensions, referring to herself as a “metaphysician.” In Idyllwild, Ernie focused on the environment and protecting the town from what he considered “greedy development.”

What would they think about Idyllwild’s 21st Century challenges with housing affordability, risk of catastrophic wildfire and all the complex issues that arise via globalization, exponential technology and our market-focused reality?

In the middle of the pandemic, our family was thrust into the local housing crisis. Long-story-short: we moved to Nelson, British Columbia. We don’t think the irony would be lost on Ernie that in order to develop the projects that we love and that brought us this award in his name, we needed to find a more affordable place to live. It saddens us to read of so many households getting uprooted and the impact this has had on our beloved community. We might ask: What happens when we prioritize market-chasing over all other pursuits and values? Is this creating a reality we want for ourselves and future generations?

Fortunately, we now have great tools to explore such challenges and develop promising alternatives. We think Ernie, a kindred work-from-homer, might appreciate Zoom meetings and the other web-based technologies that enable us to collaborate on MCMA from abroad. Even this letter is globalized, co-written by Mark in Berlin, where he’s currently attending a conference with daughter Zora, and Mara in Canada with son Dante.

Looking ahead, you should know that MCMA is sponsored by the Idyllwild Forest Health Project, a nonprofit we co-founded to investigate local fire ecology issues, carbon sequestration and the notion that the health of the forest and the health of the human community are interdependent. Our goal is to develop programs that support mutual education and adult development, and once we’re all wise enough, ecosystem-based community forestry. If successful, Idyllwild will serve as a pilot project for forest communities throughout the American West and beyond.

We welcome your thoughts at the links or phone number below.

Deepest gratitude and affection to all,

Mark and Mara
idyforest.org
mountainaid.net
(951) 468-0110