Atlanta’s Conservation Maven: Sally Sears

Kate Tucker: I'm Kate Tucker and this is Hope Is My Middle Name, a podcast from Consensus Digital Media. Today we get to talk with Sally Sears, a lifelong journalist and one of the founders of South Fork Conservancy, a group dedicated to restoring the banks of the South Fork of Peachtree Creek in Atlanta, Georgia. I first learned about Sally Sears after reading the incredible story of Zonolite Park, which is on Peachtree Creek. It used to be a wasteland of sorts. The EPA actually classified it a brownfield. It was contaminated by asbestos and overrun by invasive plants, and it sat there for years right in the middle of everything until Sally and a group of super dedicated volunteers decided to reclaim their watershed for the wildlife, for the community, and for the future.

I love the story of how Zonolite Park came to be, and I loved, loved, loved talking to Sally. As you'll hear, her passion, wonder, and respect for wild places is absolutely infectious.

Kate Tucker: Oh, Hi Sally!

Sally Sears: Hey Kate!

Kate Tucker: I am so happy to hear your voice. 

Sally Sears: Likewise. 

Kate Tucker: I've been dying to hear the story of how you pulled off what you did down there in Georgia, but before we get too far, I know that you've done a lot of restoration, so we're talking about restoring a whole creek bed and landscape and miles and miles of parkland in an urban area.

So I'd like to first start with the destruction aspect of that. You guys have to go in there and rip out a bunch of plants that are taking over the creek bed and kind of taking over the space for native plants to grow and thrive. So tell me, what is your favorite plant to just rip out of there, and what goes into getting that out of there?

Sally Sears: Oh my, great question. I have a nice list of favorite enemy plants, but topping that list has got to be kudzu. Kudzu is an import from over a century ago that everybody thought was going to stop soil erosion, but they hadn't dealt with the South's climate when they introduced it here, and it is truly in some people's minds, the vine that ate the south. It's miserable because it just grows so quickly. You can see it growing in the course of a day. 

Kate Tucker: Wow. 

Sally Sears: And it forms knotty little nodules under the dirt. And so, you can't just cut it and pull it. You have to kind of get at the nodule and yank it out or poison it, which is always a bad idea. So kudzu, number one enemy of creek bank restoration, and probably number two is another Asian import called privet. 

Privet has a million seeds, no friends and no enemies, so no birds want to eat it. So all these berries keep floating downstream and finding new places to grow. And they block the sun because they keep their leaves on year round. So they take over like Kudzu does. In places that need sun for native plants to flourish.

Kate Tucker: You know, kudzu, I love saying that word. What a great word. Kudzu. But kudzu, I read that it actually has taken over 7.4 million acres of US land. 

Sally Sears: Wow. 

Kate Tucker: I mean, that is outrageous. Talk to me about native plants versus invasive. Why even go in and do all that work in the first place? Why do we have to fight invasive plants on behalf of native? 

Sally Sears: We have to fight for native plants because that's what bugs like and birds like, and they're adapted to. The native plants that you put in are food for centuries for this part of the world. It's true all over the country that if you plant something that's always belonged there, you'll have more success rebuilding the bugs and the birds and the bees that make that a natural surround and habitat. We've got a plant here called crepe myrtle. It's not particularly bad, it's just nobody likes to eat it 'cause it's not from here. When you plant something like elder blossom or elderberry, you can find half a dozen different kinds of bees buzzing around it. That means that ultimately the birds will be eating the caterpillars that are being laid there by other bugs. You do have to be kind of vigilant to keep the invaders out because they don't have enemies. They don't have other birds in this environment or bugs that want to eat them, and so they grow more quickly. 

That's why we really love a good palette of native plants and lots of different kinds that bloom at different seasons and that bear different kinds of berries. So the migrating birds will have this thing to eat when they come through.

It's like milkweed and the monarchs. I think people are understanding the monarch migration better now than I did when I was young, because we've been hearing a lot about the loss of monarchs, and it's in large part the loss of milkweed, and we've been planting milkweed up and down our creeks when we restore them.

So there will one day be this ribbon of orange blooming to get the monarchs to stop on their way back to Mexico in the winter and on their way up to Canada in the summer. So that's why we love native plants. 

Kate Tucker: Do you have a native plant society, you know, helping people understand what's happening down there?

Sally Sears: Oh yes. The Georgia Native Plant Society has got lots of chapters all over Georgia, and of course, we're one of the most biodiverse states of the 50. So each section of Georgia has got lots of its own stuff. The coastal Georgia plants are a little bit different. There's 23 different kinds of milkweed alone in Georgia.

And Kate, you know, I didn't know all this stuff as a reporter. I never covered milkweed, I can say that. But over time this has just become a wonderful way to learn a lot of new things that are really important and meet a lot of people who've been caring about this for a long time. 

Kate Tucker: Hmm. Where did you grow up? 

Sally Sears: In a beautiful part of the state, right in the middle where the Appalachians are just giving out. And there were a lot of trees in a small town, a college town, and behind my house was woods and a creek. And between the woods and the creek was something we called the Red Dirt Clearing, and on a winter day, once I came out early enough in the morning that there were ice crystals projecting from the clay and I'd never seen anything like it before.

They looked like toothbrush heads the way the crystals had forced their way up. And I thought, that is wonderful. You know, got mom and dad out to look at it. Nobody, you know, had ever noticed it before and I thought, there's something out here that we don't all completely understand. How do we make this magic accessible? How do I follow this magic? How do other people get to see stuff that you wouldn't notice if it, you know, it warms up 10 degrees and it's gone. That Red Dirt Clearing as a child taught me a lot about paying attention and showing what you find when you look very carefully at something. 

Kate Tucker: Hmm. Do you remember the first time you saw Peachtree Creek?

Sally Sears: Oh, yes. Peachtree is a beautiful creek until it gets really close to the Chattahoochee River, which is where I first realized how terribly the city of Atlanta and those of us who live here had neglected the sewers. Because those creeks, when it rains, fill up with sewage. And I'll never forget one day out covering a pretty heavy flooding down there.

The trees five and six feet above the water level were full of not just disposable garbage bags, but sanitary products, sewage condoms, just awful stuff. I mean, it was terrific for news because you could demonstrate how wretched it is. But that was when the city was finally coming to confront the fact that they had to spend serious billions of dollars repairing the sewers upstream.

Those are among my earliest memories of Peachtree Creek was its terrible pollution. The neglect, the degradation, the indifference to what happens downstream, as long as you've got clear water, you know? 

Kate Tucker: Mm-hmm. 

Sally Sears: And there were many wonderful champions who sued the city and the state to enforce the Clean Water Act. And they were joined by all the cities downstream from Atlanta, Columbus,West Point, because if it leaves here that bad, it doesn't go away. It's heading merrily downstream, and it's gross when it lands. But those early images of Peachtree Creek stuck with me. And the fact that it has changed now by government action and by determined volunteers who went to court to force the government to act– strong reminders that we really do make a difference if we work together.

Kate Tucker: I wanna hear about how y'all worked together. So Zonolite Park on the South Fork of Peachtree Creek, it wasn't always a park, it was a brownfield some 15 years ago. 

Sally Sears: Yes. 

Kate Tucker: So before it was a park, who was there, who owned the land, what was the impact of those occupants and how did it end up being so contaminated?

Sally Sears: All over the country, in the 50s and 60s, they were making this industrial insulation. It was insulation that they were making out of a material called vermiculite. But this particular vein of vermiculite, they mined from Montana. And it was contaminated with asbestos and who cared? Nobody knew how bad asbestos was in the 1930s and 40s and 50s. When it started slowly coming to light, how hazardous it was. That's when all of these plants that had taken vermiculite from that place started to close down and eventually went into bankruptcy. First they took the equipment away and then they shut the buildings down, and then they scraped up the parking lot and shoved everything over with some good old, you know, Georgia red clay to seal it in place.

Most of my earliest memories of this part of town was as an industrial park, and worse, this was the place you went on the cheap if you wanted to get the oil changed in your car and just dump it out on the ground, I mean, yuck. It wasn't scary, exactly. It was just industrial…nowhere. 

Kate Tucker: Yeah.

Sally Sears: Slowly, a couple of abandoned warehouses caught the eye of some developers and they put new roofs on them and rented out some nice office space inside after they redid it, ignoring, as they should, all of the bad stuff on the other side of the railroad tracks. When we tracked down the course of the creek and realized that the polluter had gone into bankruptcy and abandoned these 12 acres, which meant that the county reclaimed them or they were sort of dumped in the county's lap, but nobody could use them because of the pollution. 

Kate Tucker: Mm-hmm. 

Sally Sears: That's when we said, look, if these tenants, there were cartoon makers and industrial honchos setting up headquarters in these beautifully restored old warehouse kind of places. Why can't we do something like that to the 12 acres that the public already owns? And that was the best part. It was already public land. 

Kate Tucker: Before you got anywhere, you had to get all the pollution out from under that clay. 

Sally Sears: That was the trick. How do we get somebody to unseal this Georgia clay covering all these acres?

And that's when the EPA came in and said, well, you know, this is bad down there, but as long as it stays sealed, the asbestos won't get free and float in the air. And then we said, well, what if we had, you know, a community garden here and children were tossing the dirt in the air? And that's when the EPA said, ah, well that's a bad idea.

Let's see if we can't force the polluter to clean it up. That's how we got the pollution out. It wasn't sleight of hand, we meant it, we wanted a community garden there. And the EPA said, okay. And the county, DeKalb County Georgia, gets great credit for its lawyers and the EPAs lawyers taking the culprit to court, forcing the bankruptcy judge to force them to pay to clean this stuff up. Two and a half million dollars! Loved it!

Kate Tucker: Wow, you had to go through a battle in court. I wanna know more about who was involved in that and how it came about. 

Sally Sears:  We'd gotten going, I don't know, 2010, 2011 or so, something like that. So Gwendolyn Keyes Fleming, a woman who had been the district attorney for our county zone, alright, knew that it was sitting there on the county's parks inventory unused. And she, as the newly appointed head of the Southeastern EPA division said, you know, that might not be a bad place to start. Now I'm putting words in her mouth. I don't ever remember her saying that. And she certainly wasn't doing any home cooking, favoring, you know, where she'd come from. But between her and DeKalb County and volunteers on our board, as lawyers said, you know, this is good. We should help with this. And they all together. Said, let's see what the polluter says. And of course, if you're a company in bankruptcy, it's kind of hard to find you or to get to you. So it took the might of those national and local institutions of public service, all saying, okay, this is worth fighting and this land that we can recover is worth doing something with, that people will want.

There was one wonderful meeting. Oh, this was so fun, Kate. We had to have a meeting. Of course, all the lawyers had to have a meeting. I said, why don't we meet in the old headquarters of the company store, you know, the company where all the white shirted guys sat, telling the blue collar guys outside how to make vermiculite into Zonolite. Let's meet in the old company office because it had been turned into a Soto Zen home. So if we can meet in a place with all these lawyers who are sort of scrappy with each other, where there's a Soto Zen attitude, maybe we can get something done. And we did. It was great. 

Kate Tucker: That's incredible. I heard a tell of a man with an Indiana Jones hat?

Sally Sears: Well, yes, absolutely. His name is Billy Hall and he was on our side. He was one of the founders with me and with Bob Kerr of the South Fork Conservancy. And when we had that meeting in the Soto Zen Center to keep all the lawyers less cranky, he was a little bit late. And he came striding into the meeting with his hat on fresh from the fields. Because his work is remediation all over the world. He came striding in and he said, look, here, we can do this and here's what it'll take and here's what it'll look like when it's done. And we all watched him as he came in. He unrolled a thick circle of papers on the table and everybody kind of got up and leaned in. It really was like we were looking at maps of the, you know, the lost Temple of Denzor or something. And if Billy hadn't worn that hat that day, I'm not sure the effect would've been nearly as strong. It was great. 

Kate Tucker: So at that point when you were in court, how long had it been that the land had been just lying fallow and contaminated?

Sally Sears: Oh, 20-30 years. It just sat there. It's so close to the creek that it was a floodplain and would rain heavily. There would be pools and puddles all over so nobody could get in there. And slowly the plants started to come back into the clay, but they were all these non-native invading plants. But it was reclaimable if you had the vision and the idea that you could make a difference to get to the creek, and that's where we started. We wanna get to the creek. How do we get through this minefield of asbestos to do it? And that's when we really started concentrating on how do we fix the hazards? Who can pay to fix the hazards and get us on this crunchy gravel path that won't mess with the floodplain.

And when it rains, it still floods up in there. But we built a beautiful pond, that the birds just love, to hold the water instead of lots of lumpy little pools. Of course one of the neighbors said, well, now you're just gonna build a pond and those mosquitoes are gonna eat me up. That's when the Audubon Society came in. They call it Georgia Audubon. Now they've gone statewide, and they said, well, you know the best trick for mosquitoes is birds eating the mosquito larvae. 

Kate Tucker: Yes. 

Sally Sears: So we had wonderful partners with a lot of really thoughtful naturalists saying this is what'll help. And boy has it ever. It's great. 

Kate Tucker: Then when you were successful, you kept the name of the park, the name of the contaminant?

Sally Sears: We kept the name of the park 'cause it needed redemption. Plus it's highly memorable. I mean, if we called it Creekside Park, who would find it? You know, there's a lot of creeks in it, but I thought it was really important to redeem the name of that park, to put Zonolite on the map as a place that was worthy of restoration. And that yields great benefits because it's restored.

One day while we were early in this, it had rained and the creek was a little bit high, and I went down to the bank and saw on the other side of the sandbar, the beach, this really dapper gentleman in waders with a stick in his hand with, you know, pinchers on the end like you pick up trash with. And he was picking up rocks from the bottom of the creek. I thought, what is he doing? Who is this guy? He turns out to be a PhD. He was, I think, as I remember, he was wearing a bow tie under his waders and the pieces he was picking up– he'd throw most of them down, but every so often he would pick up one and really look at it hard and tuck it in his pocket. They were pieces of pottery from the earliest peoples who lived on this creek, maybe 500, maybe a 1000 years ago. And they left their marks in pots and the art on those pieces. Some of them were inscribed with beautiful designs, and he, Dr. Ansley Abraham is his name, he called me over and I said, what are you doing? And he showed me some of these incised marks, and I have been a fan of it ever since because it reminds us how long that creek has been loved. 

Kate Tucker: So in the whole process, what do you think some of the bigger challenges were that you faced? 

Sally Sears: Getting people to know that there's a creek in their neighborhood. Do we, you know, send out brochures and put up billboards and say, come on down, or do we let people find it? And if we let people find it, well, will people find it who don't love it like we do? You know, I'm not suggesting they'd bring in privet or litter or anything, but how do we get other people to care for it like we care for it and then begin this nurturing process.

I think everybody who works in this kind of world knows the benefit of volunteers because they make believers outta people that you couldn't reach otherwise. 

Kate Tucker: Mm-hmm. 

Sally Sears: And we've been really lucky with neighbors volunteering and some of the big corporations in Atlanta, Delta, Cox, Coca-Cola, have all been wonderful,Home Depot, and have helped us by sending 15 and 20 people at a time to plant things and to cut privet. In fact, it turns out privet… We cut every two weeks in the park and every two weeks the Atlanta Zoo comes, sends a truck, picks it up and hauls off our cut privet to feed the giraffes at the zoo. 

Kate Tucker: What? You're kidding me. 

Sally Sears: No, I'm not, I'm not.

Kate Tucker: You're feeding the giraffes–

Sally Sears: Yes. 

Kate Tucker: –with privet and oh my gosh, that's so beautiful. That's so perfect. Okay. I am fascinated by the idea that a few people could have such a transformative impact. I want to know how the South Fork Conservancy came together. 

Sally Sears: Oh, well that's a good one, 'cause that one really goes back to Frederick Law Olmsted, the grandfather of landscape design. He laid out a linear park in what was then suburban Atlanta. This is the turn of the last century. And all those parks that he laid out had gotten so used and so loved that in the 1990s, a group formed to help restore those parks. And I was part of that group because we had a great blueprint: what did Olmsted think was a good idea? Let's do that, you know? But there was one little piece that he had run out of money before he could do it, and it had a creek running through it and a ravine in it. And over the hundred years, that ravine had filled with all kinds of bad things, and people who would camp out down there because it was a quiet nowhere place. With enough money, something like, I don't know, $10 million, we restored a lot of that. Built a lot of trails right alongside the creek, a very tiny creek going through the ravine that nobody could see, because it had a trail next to it, was suddenly visible to people and they started using it.

Kate Tucker: Hmm. 

Sally Sears: That proved to those of us in the Olmsted Linear Park Alliance, the value of eyes on the creek could be the salvation of some of these urban creeks that had been so neglected and abused. So that was when we knew that if we could do that to Deepdene Park right there on Ponce de Leon Avenue in the middle of Atlanta, what if we did this for other tributaries of Peachtree Creek that were equally bad, that were already public land? And that's where it got really exciting because when we discovered that most of the way from Deepdene all the way to Peachtree Creek's headwaters was public 'cause of sewer lines, we said maybe we should form a group and do this. And that's what we did. 

Kate Tucker: It's incredible it goes all the way back to Olmsted. I mean, what an amazing individual and the history just in his life alone–

Sally Sears: Mm-hmm. 

Kate Tucker: –the way he has impacted our country, and when you look at how he created Central Park and what the state it was in when he came along, you know? 

Sally Sears: Oh yeah.

Kate Tucker: It's just impossible to imagine that type of transformation being able to occur in one person's lifetime. 

Sally Sears: Yes. 

Kate Tucker: So to consider that he's still having an impact, you know, into the 21st century. That's just such an inspiration, and I love that you kind of picked up on that and you're focusing on this one specific area.

Was there a personal connection for any of you three to Peachtree in South Fork?

Sally Sears: Well, yes. As a matter of fact, if I spilled a Coca-Cola in my driveway, Which I try not to do, but if I did, it would roll right down into Peavine Creek and half a mile later it's in the South Fork and three miles later it's in Peachtree itself. So this is our watershed, and we all said, you know, we live here. We could make a difference internationally. We could make a difference nationally. We could lobby, we could vote, or in my case, we can get out there with clippers and yank weeds and invite people to build very low impact trails, and walk along the banks of the creeks and look at the creek and feel, you know, your heart lift.

Kate Tucker: Yeah. Wow. Yeah, definitely your heart lifts. I mean, it sounds like this is just a great public private volunteer, all of it, you're touching all the things. You've got grassroots, grass tops, all the people engaged. I mean, who are your other sort of government entities who are supporting or part of keeping this going?

 Sally Sears: Well, the state of Georgia's been great, but Audubon and the Georgia Native Plant Society have been very good nonprofit supporters. But you know, Kate, when you get going with government money, park and rec folks have to compete with other huge needs in a community. And you do not want to get into a situation where you know you're fighting over scarce resources because then you're fighting against your neighbors who really want the roads repaved, and it's hard. And that's where a lot of the tension comes in, is how do you fund the things you want that are not at the expense of things that you also want, but then, you know, families do that all the time in their own budgeting. So yeah. 

Kate Tucker: So as a journalist, you've covered so many stories and interviewed so many people who are doing the work of conservation and they've been doing it over the years. I'm curious how you have seen people successfully navigate those conversations that can be polarizing. But instead they help bring people together around a sort of shared goal that includes everybody's best interests in some way, and also, of course, the planet’s. 

Sally Sears: Ooh. Well, glass half full, glass half empty is where the fight starts. I spent quite a bit of time telling people how terrible things were. The journalistic tendency to cover friction can make things harder. When you choose to cover the 20% that we do agree on, you end up getting somewhere because then people relax and they smile instead of flexing their muscles against you. And I've also found the environmental community can be a real tough place where, you know, people flinging around phrases like, don't let the good be the enemy of the best. And if it can't be wilderness, it's not gonna be anything. And to heck with it, turn it into a parking lot. Those arguments just don't help.

Kate Tucker: Yeah. 

Sally Sears: And it just doesn't work, you know? 

Kate Tucker: Yeah. 

Sally Sears: We all gotta acknowledge each other's shortcomings and see what we can do that we do agree on. It's hard, and a journalistic background is a reminder of a lot of things– that the urgent gets in the way of the important, and I hate that. 

Kate Tucker: Yes, I need to hear that. That's something I certainly struggle with regularly. I was reading or listening to something that you had said about one of the challenges being getting people engaged and getting them to stay engaged, 'cause when you're just starting an initiative like that there's all kinds of different ideas and people can go north, south, east, and west really fast.

Sally Sears: I was very opportunistic, you know, at first, and I probably still am, you know, when people say stick to your knitting, they don't acknowledge the fact that you're really not knitting. You know, who's knitted in a long time? 

But the creeks are everywhere. And it's all everywhere. How do you pick your piece of everywhere? I don't know. But once you start, sometimes I do think that your successes will show you what the next step ought to be. 

Kate Tucker: Mm. What is the next step for the South Fork Conservancy? 

Sally Sears: We've got five miles that we have almost finished. We've got some connections still to make, and then there's upstream, there's 25 miles upstream, and then of course there's other urban creeks that can benefit from this.

There's a lot of neighborhoods that don't have enough access to the green space around them. There's usually plenty of green space. It's just not easy to get into or doesn't feel safe if you're in it. 

Kate Tucker: It does really come down to connection, doesn't it? Both physically, you're connecting the trails and the parks, but also with the people who have to come together in order to make it happen.

Sally Sears: Well, that's, that's a challenge because if it's the creek in your backyard, you don't want people back there messing with it, and there's enough fear among all of us of strangers in our front yard, let alone in our backyard, that it requires a lot of care, a lot of attention, a lot of listening, and also a lot of considering, well, maybe there's a different side of the creek we can put a trail on.

I've seen this repeatedly in other organizations like the Path Foundation. They've got a trail that goes from Atlanta to Alabama, and that is pretty cool. And they struggled to get that built. Now it's exceedingly popular. But they would go through some places and the neighborhood would say, well, we're not gonna like this unless you build us a high wall. And we need a fence so we can get in there. But it's gotta be a one way fence. And then after a few years, the fence isn't locked anymore because there's no hazard. And that's a large part of helping convince other people that it can work if people of goodwill agree. 

Kate Tucker: Hmm. Well, Sally, I am currently 700 miles north of you, but after a story like this, I have got to know what it's like to walk the banks of Peachtree Creek. Can you take me on a little journey through Zonolite Park? I mean, what would we see or hear or smell if we went on a walk today? 

Sally Sears: I can hear our feet crunching on the gravel as we walk through a little fringe of woods and enter the meadow that the Environmental Protection Agency forced the polluting company to clean up with their own money.

That was so great! So now Kate, you and I are walking into a green meadow that is edged with native plants that we've put back, blueberries and some blackberries, and there is a community garden on the edge that we'll walk past. In the little gazebo in the community garden, somebody is probably out having some iced tea. And when I was there yesterday, a fellow showed up with a bouquet of flowers to congratulate his honey on her master's degree that she was earning that day. So they told me they'd been married there a year ago. I thought, my god, 15 years ago this place was a brownfield and now you're getting married here.

Once we walked through the meadow, we cross a little foot bridge and we're in the woods. With, I don't know, 15 or 20 different kinds of trees. Hickory and walnuts and pecans and, oh, lots of oaks and maples. There's an Irish music instrument society here that they come out to Zonolite and play on Saturday morning sometimes, and I think, oh, oh, that's beautiful. Oh, enchanting, these gorgeous old instruments, and here they are, you know? Coming out of nowhere to come play together in the forest. If we take a left, we're gonna go along a crunchy path down to the beach, which is really a sandbar, but we love to call it a beach because it's so unlikely that there would be beaches in the middle of Atlanta, you know?

But as you and I are walking, Kate Tucker, we're passing today beautiful blooms of the elder bush, elder blossom, elderberry, and it smells just perfumey! Keep on going downstream. And, we've got a good loop that you can make and come back up through a little upland that volunteers have helped to build through the woods and they've planted it with native azaleas. So next year, or maybe it'll take three years, those native azaleas will bloom and they smell good. So we got a lot of good smells. How's that? You liking that? 

Kate Tucker: It sounds so magical. I mean, and you're telling me this is in Atlanta? 

Sally Sears: Yes. 

Kate Tucker: Like in the city?

Sally Sears: Yes, you're maybe three miles from two major interstates that meet here. You know, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is about half a mile away. So we get these scientists who are in there wrestling with some of the world's scariest bugs. And they come down here for a picnic or just to get away from the lab. Emory University is right there, and this is a respite for them that didn't exist until we started paying attention to how to restore a creek. 

Kate Tucker: For you, when you go there, is there anything that's just extra special to you that maybe someone else might not notice, but maybe it's something that you're drawn to or something that you have a connection with?

Sally Sears: Whenever I walk on that crunchy gravel path, I remember the fellows in outer space outfits that came from the EPA to prove that it was hazardous, and seeing them walking through these fields of kudzu and privet and sampling the dirt they could dig down and get to. And then now that they're gone, it's gorgeous and you know, when you don't see something, it's easy to miss it. So I'm really reveling in the fact that I don't see that stuff anymore. It's gone. 

Kate Tucker: Wow. One of the things I love about these conversations is I get to kind of have this glimpse into someone else's lived experience and it gives me so much hope just to see the transformative work that's being done, and I think about what you're doing as a potential model for other communities, other cities.

Where have you seen work like this happening across the country? Have you been in touch with other municipalities and kind of compared notes? And how do you think what you're doing could be replicated? 

Sally Sears: Ooh, here in Georgia I think we've gotten really helped by looking at the example in New York City of the Highline where they took a railroad line that was elevated and then they had some really forward thinking landscape architects who said, look, this is grim. Plants that can grow on a railroad overpass have got some real tenacity. And, uh, no kidding. And Chicago's done the same thing with the strip of restored stuff. And in Atlanta it's the Beltline and the folks who are planting along Atlanta's Beltline, which is a circle of connected railroad tracks, have found the same idea that we've done on the creeks, on the riverine structures of Atlanta. It's different kinds of plants, of course, but it's also mostly public land, so those ideas are complimentary. I'd love to know if somebody in Idaho is doing this. You know, Minneapolis does a lot of this, and I don't know how I would encourage somebody else to do it except to say, where's your creek? If you don't know the name of your creek, if you don't know the name of where your Coca-Cola rolls down into, then maybe that's a good place for you to start.

Kate Tucker: Hmm. It's interesting to think of the sort of identity a trail or a park can give a place. I mean, tell me about the neighborhoods that are benefiting from this. How are people engaging? You know what different communities are coming in and using the park in a way that's kind of bringing those groups or those people to life.

Sally Sears: So many people say, oh, I grew up on that creek. These are people over the age of 50. I grew up throwing rocks in that creek. I'm so glad that now I can get my children or my grandchildren down there. But for every five of those people, somebody of the same age group says, I never knew there was a creek down there. And that's the person who brings a child or a grandchild and watches them learn how to skip a rock. I've got a friend whose nephew didn't know how to skip a rock, and that kid was nine years old and I thought, what a pity, you know, he's missed five or six years of his life chucking rocks. And my friend was just so thankful that she didn't have to drive far to get him there. It was in the neighborhood. These are in all of our neighborhoods.

We got lost with his car stuff, Kate, here in Atlanta. I mean, a sprawl city, a place where at one point people said, well, why do we need sidewalks? Everybody's gonna have a car. You're not gonna wanna walk. I think that was somebody walking in July and August who came up with that idea. And that's why so many of the neighborhoods don't have parks in them. And why they do have creeks in 'em, but nobody knows the creeks are there 'cause they're so busy driving across them. If we've let them go and don't know that they're there, well shame on us. Go find it. You don't need a map, you just kind of watch water roll downhill and see what's neglected and how you can help it 'cause it really isn't that hard to get started. And when people see you doing it, they often want to help. 

Kate Tucker: At the end of the day, what do you think you personally take away from this work and for this work being the work of nature?

Sally Sears: It's a purpose. It's a unifier. It's… we are not here alone. We are here as part of something bigger. I spent an awful lot of my time thinking, I'm an American. I'm independent. I can do this, but it's not really true. And when you can help a little thing like a creek, you start to see some of those intertwining connections that make for a much more rich life for yourself as well as for the world around you, and you inspire other people to do it too.

Kate Tucker: What does sustainability mean to you? 

Sally Sears: That it'll be there tomorrow. That this isn't just working one meal at a time, that this is a feast that's gonna continue, and that if we all bring a piece of ourselves to it, we can make it last for good. 

Kate Tucker: I would love to have a southern feast with you. Let me tell you, I was already fantasizing about mint, juleps or sweet tea on the porch in the south. I just miss the south so much. Oh, I would love, finally, just to hear what's bringing you hope these days. 

Sally Sears: I am glad you asked that. You remember a piece you did recently with the gentleman in the Bayou in Houston and how he was out there with his boat. I loved that. Loved that. Oh, he's out there sucking up all this garbage. I wondered what would it take to get us to change our ways and have less garbage rolling into the Bayou? So how do you do that? Well, what happens when people change their habits? And I think about smoke detectors and I think about seat belts. All of those things have, been just in the last several decades, changed and saved lives.

It's like, how do we get trash out of the creek? How do we change? Do we get rid of styrofoam? That's a hard one. Do we get rid of single use plastic? That's a hard one, but we've done it with other things. Somebody smart is gonna figure this out and we're all gonna benefit and we're gonna change our ways because we can change our ways 'cause we've done it before.

Kate Tucker: I love that. Well, it has been an absolute pleasure. I'm just so grateful to get to spend this time with you. Thank you, Sally!

Sally Sears: Thank you. This has been fun and I hope you will let me know when I can put the sweet tea on and get the porch swing ready for you.

Closing Credits: A great big thanks to Sally Sears for sharing the incredible story of a park and creek reclaimed, restored, and loved now by so many. For more on how they did it and what's ahead, visit southforkconservancy.org.

Hope Is My Middle Name is hosted and executive produced by me, Kate Tucker. You can find me on Instagram at Kate Tucker Music, and if there's someone you think belongs on the show, please send me a message. This episode was produced by Christine Fennessy with editing from Rachel Swaby. Our production coordinator is Percia Verlin. Our sound designer and engineer is Scott Somerville. Music by the fantastic artists at Epidemic Sound, SoundStripe and me. Big thanks to Conor Gaughan, our publisher and visionary at Consensus Digital Media. Hope Is My Middle Name can be found on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. It would mean a lot to us if you would follow, rate, and review the show.

Hope Is My Middle Name is a podcast by Consensus Digital Media produced in association with Reasonable Volume. See you next time!