For so many reasons, it was without question that the 2025 Firefly Gathering was the best earthskills gathering I’ve ever attended. And yet in the middle of all the positive energy, the mutual aid actions, the workshops and the return of old and new friends, a near tragedy occurred. The event I’m speaking of was, in fact, the most terrifying moment that I have ever experienced at a Firefly Gathering.
On Wednesday afternoon, the first official day of the gathering, a short but extremely powerful storm blew through the Wild Human Preserve; ironically it was just as Murmuration was setting up their tribute performance to Hurricane Helene on the main stage, The Swan and the Loon: A New Folktale of Love & Grief. As the gale raged through the gathering, people were running for cover in their vehicles or wherever they could find shelter. I was on the stage, looking out over the stand of pines where most of the staff was camped. To my horror, a massive tree top broke loose, the back end smashing into a camper truck, sending shards of glass and splinters everywhere; the top slapping down on the front-end of another truck, where our beloved Bigwitch relative sat inside. When I saw that huge tree drop, all I had time for was a split-second, single-word prayer. “Please…”
I could hardly breathe until I learned that nobody had been hurt. Still, my heart nearly stopped when I learned that the divine and devoted partner of our amazing worktrade chef, Jeremy, and their precious, chubby little toddler had been inside the cab when the tree smashed into the back of the truck. They were extremely shaken but otherwise okay. I don’t have words to describe how impactful this was for all of us; bringing up the terror and trauma from Helene that many of us were still integrating.
Needless to say, we moved everybody’s camps out of those pines as soon as possible. But how do you go to sleep after something like that? As event organizers and leaders, we bear the weight of everybody’s safety on our shoulders. Insurance and processes aside, I don’t know how I would cope if somebody got seriously hurt at one of our gatherings, on my watch. So we sat and cried and laughed and stayed up way too late trying to process this traumatic event.
Then, as I was walking home, through those pine trees in the wee hours of the morning, they started talking to me. In the darkness, I received clarity, and some important pieces began to fall into place.
Walking home that night, I saw how these trees are a metaphor for the society we are watching crumble around us right now. It looks good. It looks alluring. Everybody wants to be a billionaire, right? Not me, thank you; but it’s an easy trap to fall into. So many people wanted what appeared to be the best place to live during our week-long pop-up village – the pines, not knowing how unstable they really were. The tempting allure of the modern world is just as dangerous as camping in those pines.
I was also alerted to the weakness of the monoculture represented here. These pines have a certain majesty; but so little strength. The purpose for planting these scraggly trees all together in straight lines is so that they will bring higher dollars in fewer years; but monocultures don’t exist in the natural world. That grove of trees is not natural, and would normally be surrounded and interspersed with other types and ages of trees, all supporting each other. Even our own gut microbiome is 90 percent bacteria–other, and humanity cannot exist without this diversity. No expression of monoculture is healthy or sustainable in the natural world.
Personally, I am committed to doing everything I can in this body and at this time to disrupt monocultural thinking. I will do everything I can to sneak diversity into the pathways and the cracks and the nooks and crannies of this reality.
Firefly celebrates diversity in all ways. Diversity of thought; age diversity; ethnic diversity; gender diversity; skill diversity. Because we listen to, study, and revere nature, we understand that diversity is what is keeping us alive. It is what inspires transformation and evolution. Diversity is life.
I invite you to do the community shadow work and join me in this way of thinking; together we can bring life-affirming diversity into our communities and we can transform the world for good.
It is no coincidence that this storm blew in and that tree fell exactly when we were about to start a presentation on the effects of climate change and the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. This is not just a metaphor. This is not fringe activism. We are joined in a collective movement to transform not only forests and streams and oceans; but institutions and ways of thinking….and our own hearts.
The 2025 Firefly Gathering inspired me like never before to build bridges and find new ways to work together; to reprogram wrong ways of thinking; and to bring more diversity to destructive systems in our brains. This gathering inspired me to strengthen partnerships and work together to tend the gardens of our hearts, minds and souls; to pluck the weeds and bring diversity to monocultural ways of thinking. This is the wisdom I received by listening to the pines.
This year, no one will camp in the pines. Instead, they will be the People’s Pines, full of class spaces, an evening open mic / poetry slam, / jam tent, the Habibi Village Dining Lounge and even a little kids play area. Folks can lounge in the shade during the heat of the day, finishing projects under those pines. As difficult as this near-tragedy was, I am fundamentally grateful for the storm that tore trees apart, and yet knit our hearts and community even closer together.
-Marissa P. | Executive Director, The Firefly Gathering
