A Remembrance from the Merwin Conservancy

In an Op-Ed published in the New York Times, geobiologist Dr. A. Hope Jahren shares her experience working on the poet and environmental activist's land in Hawaii. "I got lost when I went looking for W.S. Merwin," Dr. Jahren begins. From there: 

The Peahi Valley is not easy to find. I drove the Hana Highway at dawn, back and forth along the windward coast of Maui. On one side was the electric-blue ocean; on the other an emerald curtain of jungle. I forgot about my destination, and began searching for a way to never leave. Hours later, I found the turnoff and followed a dirt road until the clotted mud stopped my car, then I got out and walked. I saw the waving fronds of a thousand palm trees and I knew that I had arrived.

Mr. Merwin, who died last week at age 91, and his wife Paula, transformed the valley. They built the Merwin Conservancy: 19 protected acres, an island within an island. The land was a dumping ground in 1977, little more than a rash of grassy boils festering in the exhausted soil. That same year, Mr. Merwin planted a sapling in the blight, then got up the next day and planted another one. The day after he did the same, and the day after that also. His trees made soil, and the soil made more trees. He planted a tree every day on that land for years, until his friends took over the planting under his direction.

Read on at the New York Times.