I was reading a local Montana newspaper this week about task force that has been rewilding streams with what they call ‘low-tech process-based restoration’ (LTPBR). This group, The Gallatin River Task Force, has taken to re-introducing the technology of beavers to bring health back to watershed ecosystems. As it turns out, beavers create the ideal conditions for healthy wetlands by doing their usual work of creating obstacles and diversions—which allow more surface water to reach aquifers—and helps the water remain in the ecosystem which sustains it. Without the diversions and obstacles created by the beavers, the water accumulates too quickly, creating deep channels causing soil erosion of the banks. In this case, LTPBR means creating ‘beaver dam analog structures’ (fake beaver dams) and ‘post-assisted log structures’ --structures that mimic the beavers’ actual structures -- obstacles that helps divert the water so that the wetland holds the water longer, and captures the sediment.

I don’t know about you, but I had never really considered how obstacles and diversions were crucial to the health of something. I had learned about how beavers’ work helped meadows to form but hadn’t learned about their effect on watersheds and aquifers—especially the subtlety of water remaining long enough to nourish the system. I hadn’t considered that slowing down a river allows for something else: something that can’t happen any other way.  And I began to wonder about the obstacles and diversions in my own life—and about how much I discount them or am annoyed by them—thinking it would be better if the path was straighter or more linear. There’s so much written about goal directed life, and productivity—about how to ensure that you get there (wherever there is) faster and more efficiently. And not enough about the need, benefit or blessing of the things that block our paths or shift our course.

Much of my training as a psychologist was shaped by changes in the healthcare system. I trained in Boston which at the time was on the fast track of managed care. The regulations and contracts of managed care impacted both the reimbursement for mental health and reimbursement for student or trainee providers. My internship began at one hospital which went bankrupt and closed its doors during my training year, forcing me to move to another hospital system mid-year. Psychology training at the time had a lot of 1:1 supervision and a lot of seminars—7-10 hours of supervision and 4-6 hours of seminar a week. It was a deep immersion. At the first hospital I had seven fabulous teachers, and at the next hospital I was gifted the exposure and knowledge of seven more teachers—so that in my one training year, splintered into pieces, I got in-depth learning from over 14 teachers—who had different perspectives, styles, strengths and ways of working with clients. It's not a year I would recommend but it's a year I am grateful for. Like the stream diverted because of the dams, I had to expand my learning into new contexts, new situations, new communities and new teachers. I had to sort what was standard, what was particular to a worldview, and what worked with what clients. It is more than twenty years later, and I am still absorbing my learning from those years. The diversions and obstacles creating a lifetime of learning to absorb.

It's hard to appreciate obstacles in real time. It is much easier to see the benefit of obstacles from a distance. This is as true of a watershed, as it is in our lives. You have to pan out and see all of the small ways that the diversion shifted one thing so that something else would be nourished in a way that it would not have, save for the diversion. I can see it with my training, in part, because over the years I have gotten to see so many ways the many diversions have allowed me to help people in ways that might have been impossible otherwise—I was privileged with so many more perspectives from so many teachers—and not just my supervisors. When you work in different places you learn from everyone. At the hospitals and clinics I worked in there were nurses, and occupational therapists, social workers and psychiatrists. There were fellow students –and of course, of course, clients. And the diversions allowed me to be in these different worlds fully immersed and nourished—in the same way that a diverted stream will feed a different stand of trees, which in turn allows birds to flourish, which changes the ecosystem around it.

I’m not sure how to appreciate the diversions and obstacles when they show up, but maybe it’s more of a form of practice. Taking a page from the Gallatin River Task Force, it might be necessary (instead of waiting for them to show up) to introduce your own form of ‘low-tech process-based restoration’ into your routines. This might be the ability to name or identify an obstacle as useful: the trip that was canceled, the project that was rejected, the sudden need to attend to a family member. The ability to say in the moment: this isn’t what I wanted, but it may offer a gift I need. Or, it may be a practice or action that you need to introduce, like the beaver dam analog structure, which forces you to slow down, rather than speed up. This might be as simple as taking a break from a project or a piece of writing and reading something from a completely different topic area—or trying something new.

I am reminded of the famous jazz musician Sonny Rollins who after becoming a huge success, pulled out of performing for two years, and instead, between 1959 and 1961, he headed to the  Williamsburg Bridge, climbing up into the walkways,  where he would practice for up to 15 hours a day. He noted that it was a space that allowed him to play everything he knew and everything he’d heard—and let himself hear and feel the music in a new way.  He chose to let his music meander—which is exactly what the technology of beavers allows a stream to do.

And maybe meandering is about relationship—because meandering allows for contact. When beavers create obstacles and diversions—more water comes into contact with the whole ecosystem. And when Sonny Rollins played for two years under the Williamsburg Bridge he came into contact with his music in a new way—he left after two years with a different relationship to his music, and himself. And while we can’t all take two years off to play our music under a bridge, we can look at obstacles and diversions as a chance to come into contact with something new—in our work and ourselves. Or we can find ways of slowing ourselves down, so that we can find a new relationship to what we are doing.

© 2023 Gretchen L Schmelzer, PhD

Hayes, M. (2023). Every Drop Counts: Low Tech Process-Based Restoration. Sept 21 -Oct 4 2023 Explore Big Sky, p. 33.

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