Idyllwild Forest Health Project founders conduct workshop to build connection, resilience

Mark Yardas and Mara Schoner, founders of the Idyllwild Forest Health Project, conducted a workshop at the Library on Tuesday, February 11, hosted by the Friends of the Idyllwild Library. The IFHP, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, was created to be an open platform, discovering and matching needs and the resources to address those needs within our community. Although the initial focus was on protecting the community from wildfire and turning the fuels that create fire danger into a useful resource, its best-know project is Mountain Communities Mutual Aid. MCMA is in turn known as a food distribution, but matches many types of needs, and many types of volunteerism.

Schoner said that the purpose of the event was “to find out how much connection and agency we can co-develop in this room together in 90 minutes.” The goal was to discover “steps that we can all take toward creating greater resilience in our communities.” Yardas asked those who had gathered to define resilience and heard concepts like perseverance and quick recovery from adversity. He asked if recovery meant returning to a previous state or finding a new state, agreeing that “It’s never the same.”

Yardas asked us to “look around at all the collective intelligence in this room right now, all the lived experience, the range of experience and differing world views.” The open platform paradigm nurtures collective intelligence. With that in mind, participants were invited to stand and chose a partner, hopefully someone they did not already know well, to talk to. Once these conversations started they were hard to break off, but attendees were asked to switch partners until we had each developed a little rapport with a handful of familiar strangers. Yardas posed questions, including “What do you consider the greatest challenge to this community’s resilience?” and “What strengths or gifts could you bring to work on this challenge?” Eventually these conversations were reported to the group.

Yardas and Schoner also fielded questions about the origin of IFHP and MCMA. He referenced Idyllwild Conversations, a series of public conversations that brought people together to discuss local concerns and solutions. He expressed a desire to explore how we can “build a culture that has the sense that it is such a privilege to live in a forest, and that we need to understand how to take care of that forest.” Reaching that understanding, in Yardas’ words, “is a lot of work.”

IFHP spent years looking at different uses for “low value biomass” the ladder fuels that enable fire to get up into the canopy, and then into the town, jeopardizing everything, forest, communities, relationships and lives. They found lots of potential approaches, and the challenges posed by “politics” or “culture”.

“Then the pandemic broke out and I read about this idea of a mutual aid platform, a very open platform that allows people to say what they need and what they can provide.” Yardas recounted the counterintuitive results: volunteers immediately outnumbered requests for help. Within hours of opening up the MCMA platform, 550 volunteers had signed up, but “it took longer for the needs to appear, there is so much shame around needing in our culture. We’re very individualistic, which has it strengths, but that shame drives need under the surface. “

One of the first needs that emerged was food. Yardas and Schoner discovered the other side of that need, how much food is all around us. “Forty percent of the food in this country goes to the dump.” Mara finished the thought: “and so many people in need.”

Yardas and Schoner gave an example of a small step with great results, the Idyllwild Arts Academy’s shaded fuel break. “In 2017 IFHP explored partnering with Idyllwild Arts Academy to generate electricity with biomass and provide supplemental heating for the school. John Newman, the Academy’s operations manager at the time, attended IFHP’s meetings and learned about the concept of creating shaded fuel breaks around the community. John secured a grant to create a shaded fuel break along the edge of campus. When the Cranston Fire approached the town in 2018, firefighters were able to do a back burn because the fuel loads had been reduced. This prevented the fire from entering the community at its most vulnerable, low-lying location. Incredible things can happen when people come together and exchange information. In this case, it played a key role in saving the town from perishing in the Cranston Fire.” The initial idea of a biomass facility did not come to pass, but the conversation that the idea started had long ranging impacts.

Yardas and Schoner floated the idea of a regular series of monthly webinars, a “regular place of discourse and bringing people together.” They also have launched a new website, ourmountain.org. It focuses on the concept of flourishing and invites individuals and organizations to take part in co-creating a flourishing community. Visitors can participate in the Global Flourishing Survey, developed as a collaboration between Harvard University’s Human Flourishing Program, the Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion, the Center for Open Science, and Gallup.

To learn more about IFHP visit idyforest.org. To explore the types of assistance and opportunities for volunteerism available through MCMA or to make a contribution, visit mountainaid.org.