The Applegater

2 Summer 2017 Applegater Ed Reilly, a pillar of the Applegate community, passed away suddenly, by heart attack, on March 9. An avid outdoorsman, Ed had just completed a hike with friends on the Lower Loop Trail at Cantrall Buckley Park. He was 61. Ed grew up in Rumson, New Jersey. When he was 17, he quit high school and married his sweetheart, Jody. An uncle of Ed's, who lived in Mill Valley, California, offered to rent his small cabin in the hills to the young couple, so they packed the car and nine-month-old Jessica and drove cross-country to California. In their search for rural property, they found their dream location on Sterling Creek, where they lived for 42 years. In Oregon he took a job with the US Forest Service (USFS) on a tree-planting crew in the Applegate Ranger District. Over the years, Ed assumed a series of increasingly responsible positions before transferring to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), where he played key roles in a number of high-profile projects. Ed was always interested in learning new things and was an early adopter of computer technology. He worked with USFS and BLM for a total of 30 years, retiring in 2012. Ed embodied the community spirit of the Applegate, helping friends and neighbors without asking anything in return. He used his geographic information system skills to map the Applegate River watershed—a benefit to a multitude of local organizations, especially the Applegate Partnership and Watershed Council (APWC). In 2000 Ed caught wind of a proposed "National Fire Plan" project, immediately met with APWC, and helped get a grant approved. The result was the Applegate Fire Plan, the first community wildfire plan in the nation. This plan included a public education piece on the hows and whys of reducing fuel hazards. is fire plan was more than a piece of paper—it became a way of life in the Applegate. Ed was a big promoter of landowner responsibility to ensure healthy and fire-resistant tree stands on private lands. Exemplary land stewards, he and Jody cared for 40 acres on Sterling Creek, transforming their property from an overgrown fire hazard to a diverse, wildlife- friendly, and firesafe woodland. The property is an intensively managed small woodland farm that integrates forest health with utilization of forest by-products. Ed worked a pole-building Wood-Mizer sawmill, which had been crafted from material harvested from the property. With timber he milled, Ed built a tree house, pole barns, toys for his grandchildren, and furniture for his home. He took trees from neighbors' properties and returned them as OBITUARIES Ed Reilly October 13, 1955 - March 9, 2017 milled lumber for free, because they were neighbors. Ed was very active in the Jackson/ Josephine Small Woodlands Association. A true conservation leader, Ed played a prominent role in developing regional forest restoration strategies. In 2010, Ed and Jody were honored as the Jackson County Tree Farmers of the Year in recognition of their long-term efforts in forest stewardship. Ed was a natural teacher and enjoyed sharing his experiences with others. He and Jody led many tours of their property over the years, including countless classes for Oregon State University-Southern Oregon Research and Extension Center's land steward and forestry and natural resource programs. Using skills from his BLM days, Ed recently completed an environmental assessment so the Applegate Trails Association could begin construction of the East Applegate Ridge Trail above Ruch. In 1984, Ed took the lead in establishing the first Ruch Library in the building next to Ramsay Realty. Ed focused on the bookcase project and helped supervise, build, and paint the shelves. e work was done on-site outdoors using donated plywood and volunteer labor. Ed's young children, Jessica and Jason, became early library users, and we all benefited from his community energy. Ed was all about community. A few years ago Ed organized neighbors to put out a fire started by lightning. e Oregon Department of Forestry was swamped with other fires at that time; the fire was under control quickly. Ed was also a member of the Cantrall Buckley Park Committee, where he volunteered for a variety of projects. When he died, Ed was preparing to take on management of a large ecological restoration project at the park. He was looking forward to figuring out how to improve the park's natural drainage, redesign much of the landscape, replace the irrigation system, and modernize the parking. Adventurous and always learning, Ed and Jody traveled widely from Asia to Europe to South America. As a tree lover, Ed couldn't help but visit some of the forests in these far-flung locales, and he always brought back pictures and stories of his new discoveries. Ed leaves behind his wife, Jody; two children: daughter Jessica (Ahcho) and son Jason (Stephanie); and four grandchildren: Colin, Minya, Madilyn, and Delaney. He will be missed. NOTE: Contributors to this article include Neal Anderson, Max Bennett and board members of the Jackson/Josephine Small Woodlands Association, David Calahan, Tom Carstens, Jack Duggan, Brett Fillis, Pat Gordon, Katy Mallams, Jody Reilly, and Sandy Shaffer. For those of us who had the good fortune of knowing Nadine Levie, as a friend, healer, and neighbor, her passing brings such grief, tempered by many joyful memories. Stepping into Nadine's acupuncture clinic, adjacent to the Applegate Post Office, was like entering another world. Nadine's boundless curiosity was evident in the many tomes that lined her shelves and the diverse healing techniques that she employed on her patients—acupuncture, holistic diet, cupping, tuning rods, Tong Ren drumming, and sound healing among them. It was a common occurrence to hear her go on at length about a new approach to or method of alternative medicine that she had recently delved into, as she continued to learn and grow. I remember sharing countless deep, meaningful conversations woven together by her attunement to the seasonal cycle in our valley and its impact on us, its human residents. She observed and shared these patterns with us, her lucky patients and friends, helping us see that we were just a small part of a larger web that holds us together. So many times, before I lay down on the treatment table, we would talk at length about life on the farm, or our relationships, or some other pertinent topic that revealed Nadine Levie January 9, 1944 - March 28, 2017 Kirsten Shockey, left, with mother, Nadine Levie. our parallel experiences, to the point where these synchronicities became commonplace, though no less special. Whether it was a discussion about the over-aggressive mating habits of male ducks, a run-in with a bear, cougar, or coyote, the challenges of raising a child through the teenage years, or an exciting new diet, Nadine had endless stories to share, rich with her years of experience, wisdom, a n d c o m p a s s i o n a t e insight. ough I started seeing her for acupuncture, over time I came just as much for the deep bond of friendship with her, the respite from hectic daily lives, and the opportunity to unwind mentally, physically, and spiritually in the comfort of a small room with this incredibly gifted, intuitive healer, resembling a shaman more than a doctor. Nadine will be missed by all of us who felt her healing touch, enjoyed her quirky, inquisitive, determined, and caring presence, and grew to behold her as a godmother of sorts, caring for us as though we were her extended family. May she rest in peace, and may we be so fortunate to find ourselves so timelessly wise, so abundant in experience, and so giving as to impact our community with as much grace, compassion, dedication, and good humor as she did. Ben Yohai benyohai@gmail.com Nadine is survived by daughters Kirsten (Christopher) Shockey and Ursula (Ted) Raymond; son Gernot (Aspasia) Bartels; grandchildren Jakob (Lydia) Shockey, Kelton (Nicole) Shockey, Dmitri Shockey, Ariana Shockey, Tobias Bartels, and Lila Bartels; and two great-grandchildren. What a treat, what an honor, to have known Ed Reilly. I revel in the added bonus of having had the chance to work with Ed for several years. Ed always approached our work relationship as my cohort, but in reality, I have known Ed and Jody Reilly since I was about 15. We met at the Pennsylvania House commune on East Side Road in the Upper Applegate. We were all very young. Many years later I started working with Ed at the Applegate Ranger District. Ed could do it all: National Environmental Policy Act, GIS (geographic information system), fire, woods work. We were both present for the inception of the Applegate Partnership and the Northwest Forest Plan. In the 1990s, Ed and I were the only ones on the forest deemed "essential" employees during the Clinton furlough, and we worked together on the first programmatic consultation on spotted owls in Oregon. It was a fun two weeks! Later Ed became a part of the US Forest Service Terrestrial Salamander Taxa Team, which included myself and other experts in the region, that developed the first conservation strategy for the Siskiyou Mountains salamander, our endemic salamander. He was instrumental in GIS modeling for the project. When he went to the BLM, I got to work with him on different versions of landscape analysis that again put him in the thick of the Siskiyou ecology. Ed was always a person of note—a key player in analyzing the ecology and fire history of the Siskiyous and southwestern Oregon. He was a man of many talents, and he has touched many with his life and work. He was great man—one of my mentors and my friend. My wife, Debra, and I wish Jody, Jessica, Ahcho, and my good friend and fellow biologist Jason all of our love. David Clayton • dclayton@fs.fed.us he was my mentor. I learned so much from Ed—likely more than I realize, more than I ever thanked him for. I appreciated that he always saw me as an equal. My impression is that he viewed everyone that way, recognizing that every person "at the table" has something to offer. Speaking of tables, our kitchen table owes some serious thanks to Ed (and his wife, Jody). Chris, my husband, and I grow exceptional onions every year thanks to the Reilly's green thumbs. I think we are still propagating a garlic strain from Sterling Creek, and we just polished off some dried ai peppers from the Reilly garden. We have incorporated other tried-and-true tricks of the trade, shared by Ed, into the garden; sometimes we reflect on our hard work and success while sitting in chairs that Chris built from an incense cedar, harvested from our yard, that Ed milled up for us, and the chair pattern was in a book borrowed from Ed! If I remember correctly, on that occasion we had the fortune of enjoying some delicious bounty from the Reilly kitchen table. Anyone who knew Ed will surely agree that he had a lot to offer at every table he joined, gladly sharing his knowledge, his perspective, soaking up what others had to offer, and encouraging discourse collaboratively—that word: Ed breathed it, embodied it—collaboratively seeking See ED REILLY, page 3

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