The 7th annual Green Infrastructure Summit of the Salish Sea was held on the interwebs on March 24 and 25th, and despite not being together in person (for the 3rd year in a row!) the feeling of connectedness to a community of leaders and innovators was still profound. We are incredibly lucky to be blessed with abundant resources of all varieties here in the Salish Sea region: diverse human and cultural resources, natural resources, and soon we expect some pretty significant increases in financial resources for infrastructure too.

While we didn’t bring this community physically to one geographic area, we continued our quest to shine a spotlight on different parts of the region each year. This year the island and peninsula-rich areas including San Juan, Island, Kitsap, Jefferson and Clallam counties showed off some of their visionary leadership. Smaller jurisdictions like Sequim, where rainfall is about half of what Seattle gets, helped us think about climate change and rain as a resource of growing importance. Many Coast Salish tribes who are leading in ecological and cultural restoration and healing, call this part of the Salish Sea home, and we were fortunate to hear experiences, share stories and learn together. We were welcomed to the summit and these lands and waters by Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe Chairman Jeromy Sullivan and the S’Klallam singers, and we heard from 32 speakers and session chairs over the course of 2 days, 7 plenary sessions and a networking breakout session to boot. I could wax on and on about trees, forests, streams, beaches, dancing with cockles, money, mulches and hydrologic models… but rather than taking my word for it, you can see for yourself because we recorded the whole summit and put it on YouTube. Learn more and stay tuned for next year’s summit. We hope to return to in-person convening in March of 2023: www.12000raingardens.org/summit.