 As many of you may know, I am infatuated with photography. Since art school, I have been a photographer, getting my first real professional-level camera over 20 years ago. Back then, it was a film camera. Shooting film, you get just 36 shots a roll, at most, so you had better make them count. Today, with the advent of digital cameras, you can shoot all day and bring home 1,000 images. Sometimes, I do that. Even so, the number of photos I consider successful is only a few each time I pick up a camera. In the film days, you would develop what is known as a “contact sheet” with all the shots you took on that roll arranged in a neat pattern on a single print for review. You would analyze your pictures and choose which to print in the darkroom at a larger scale. In other words, you took all the images you captured that day, chose one or two, and let the others go unprinted, maybe forever. They may not have been successful images on their own, but they informed you as a photographer and made the successful pictures possible. When you make up your contact sheet, you are surrounding yourself in your failures, with just a glimmer of light once or twice a roll (if the light was right, and you had executed your plan perfectly). The other 35 shots are in the waste bin. (continued below)  I think the contact sheet is a good analogy for our everyday struggles. When we at the SBLC clean up a vacant lot in Saginaw, sometimes we find new illegal dumping there just a few days later. Sometimes, the flowers we plant in Arenac County don’t tolerate the soil conditions and refuse to emerge. In Bay City, we have built trails that have been washed out, we have pursued land to protect in Iosco County that we could never close, and we have had to cancel over a dozen critical volunteer events this season alone. Another good example might even be this weekly newsletter! For every final version I send out on Monday mornings, I have probably re-written it two or three times to get my point across.
All of these are failures, in a manner of speaking. Yet, we try and try again. My grandmother always used to read “The Little Engine That Could” when I was a toddler. Our family motto may as well have been “I think I can, I know I can” as we always had to work harder and hustle faster to succeed in my hometown of Auburn. Rarely did things work out at the family hardware store on the first try, but after rolling up our sleeves, we made it happen. Our philosophy at the conservancy is the same. We are a small group with huge ambitions, vast responsibilities, and a powerful calling to elevate landscapes for the benefit of all. There are so many challenges in our way, both new and old, but we are resolute. We have you and your support, we have an urgent role to protect nature, and we have the strength of our experience and passion to succeed. At the conservancy, we may stumble, but we get back up every time. With hope for our community and an open heart, Zachary Branigan Executive Director
0 Comments
 Sometimes, nothing can be harder than doing nothing at all. We are bombarded with news, advertisements, and an avalanche of social media posts and emails (like this one, but hear me out). We tell ourselves we need a break, that we need to leave the phone at home and head outside. If only it were that easy. If you have heard or read the acronym “FOMO” or “fear of missing out” you probably know where I am going with this. Given our rapidly changing daily routine, the pressure of the 24-hour news cycle, and of course, the burden of current events, it can feel as though we have a responsibility to plug in at every moment. If we take a little time for ourselves to embrace nature, we must be missing all the many things that people are talking about and doing together. For me, staying plugged in all the time has done nothing but degrade my ability to do my job well or be my best self. I am distracted by the news, discouraged by the conflicts I see online, and ineffective at staying on top of the things that matter most. Quantity of time spent plugged in can not replace the quality of those minutes and hours. The world can wait for us. Trust me. Those emails will be there when you get back. You can answer the calls you missed during business hours. The next day’s headlines will rapidly replace the news you may have missed. You’ll be a more rested, relaxed, and attentive reader and thinker when you take some time for yourself and those around you... (continued below) This weekend was just what I needed. A little camping trip along a peaceful river with my friends and their families was an antidote to the 1,000 things that have been worrying me about the coming months. When I leave the range of the cell towers, I have a little twitch of anxiety that I’ll be missing out, but guess what? The world waited for me, and I felt better for having left it behind for a little while.
With hope for our community and an open heart, Zachary Branigan Executive Director  I find it hard to be optimistic at the best of times. I believe it is my job to discover what challenges and opportunities lie ahead for the conservancy. I know we can accomplish anything to which we apply ourselves, but sometimes our work seems like an endless uphill battle. In other words, the peak always seems to be a very steep pitch away, no matter how long you’ve been climbing the mountain. That said, I spent this morning in Saginaw, at a site that was once a powerhouse automobile industry foundry. That site is being restored to nature and opened up as a community park, under the competent leadership of the Saginaw County Parks Commission. I arrived before dawn to film and photograph wildlife and landscapes, to lend a hand with the rollout of this new conservation space over the next few months. It was remarkable.  Sometimes current events have me feeling as though there is little to which I can look forward. That could not be further from the truth. Even through the pandemic, ambitious leaders in our region are bringing this amazing project to life. Nestled in the heart of Saginaw, it will provide hundreds of acres for nature exploration, hiking, photography, and wildlife habitat.
As I look back on these past six months or so, I am convinced that we have used our at-home time well, working remotely to manage our work, executing our projects, and raising funds. Not only have we survived as a staff, but we have also thrived in a new and different work environment. People have found more value in nature than ever before, and we have been there to provide high-quality natural spaces for you to enjoy. We have suffered flooding and high water across our area, and we have been working to ensure our protected wetlands are helping prevent property damage and filtering rainwater before it hits Lake Huron. We had to cancel many volunteer events, but we have used that time to develop a powerful community-wide land use survey tool that will help us be more precise in our blight reduction and land restoration efforts, while also helping our partners identify opportunities to help elevate landscapes for all. In short, the stay-at-home time has been scary and challenging, but we have been working behind the scenes to continue our mission and partner with those who share our mission. We are witnessing the birth of a new nature preserve and the awareness of our community to the value that preserve brings. We have a long road ahead of us with the pandemic, but with nature on the rebound, our projects moving ahead, a new massive nature park in the works in our region, and people appreciating the great outdoors more than ever, we have reason to be optimistic. With hope for our community and an open heart, Zachary Branigan Executive Director  This week, fewer words and more images. We were nervous about our first volunteer event of 2020, but we had nothing to fear. Dow sent a team, and our community volunteers came out in force to help us carry the weight, clean up the landscape, and make a real impact in Saginaw! Thank you. Together we removed over 2.5 tons of garbage from Saginaw’s east side. Many thanks to Dow, Waste Management, and all our Pollinator Project supporters for making this work possible. If you want to be a part of our regular call for volunteers, stay tuned to these emails and follow our Facebook page. For even more direct engagement in our volunteer organization, join our “Volunteers of the SBLC group” to receive opportunities before they go fully public.
After all, even though the pandemic continues, the need to save our communities has not gone away. Join us. With hope for our community and an open heart, Zachary Branigan Executive Director |
AuthorZachary Branigan has been the executive director of the Saginaw Basin Land Conservancy since 2012. Archives |
RSS Feed
SAGINAW BASIN LAND CONSERVANCY • 706 S. EUCLID AVE, BAY CITY, MI 48706• 989.891.9986