ENV Skill no 8: The accumulated sum of many small victories.

My artifact nr 4 relates to Environmental Skill no 8.

This artifact is the gifting of 50 envelopes with seeds of the Swamp Milkweed, a plant native to PEI, and vital to the reproduction and survival of the Monarch butterfly. I had been gifted these seeds from my internship supervisor, and in the spririt of MacPhail Woods native plant nursery, I decided to re-gift a majority of the seeds onwards, for an Island wide spread, aiming at creating a small action victory.

On the first day of ENV 3010 class, Professor Brown collected a course expectation note from each of us students and handed it back to us at the end of the course. I had written that I hoped to "have meaningful and positive exchanges with my community partner" and "spend time with things that grow." On the first day at my community partner, my supervisor Brandon and I talked about exactly that:

• marvel at our native keystone fauna and their attributes

• allowing an almost communion-like experience with the natural world

• letting this experience become a guide to our actions. 

While we had this conversation, Brandon walked me over to see the bed of the autumn-withered native Swamp Milkweeds and relayed how this bed had hosted nearly a hundred Monarch butterfly larvae during the summer. Later in my internship, Brandon generously offered me milkweed plants and seeds, and we had several positive exchanges on how to take action and spread native plants at our own accord. 

So enthused by Brandon's generosity and enthusiasm about improving the local habitat, even with seemingly small personal actions, I bought 50 envelopes and distributed all the milkweed seeds I had been gifted into them. Imagining a civilian network of Swamp Milkweed seed sowers reaching all areas of PEI, I gave the envelopes to friends, family, and other Environmental Studies students. In itself, it is a small act, but if just half of the seed carriers remember to sow the seeds given, and if just half of those seeds come to bloom, this will still be in the hundreds of Milkweed plants in the first generation next summer. Hopefully, they will take hold of the thousands within some years, offering a breeding place for many future Monarch Butterflies.

In my professional life, I take on early-stage projects for clients with a similar methodical step-by-step approach; I accumulate each win and learn from each setback until the project can set new industry standards.

One way of becoming impactful personally and successful professionally can be by reserving time and effort for small actions of generosity, joy, or community exchanges. Some of these small actions will bear fruit and build an accumulation of small victories, eventually culminating in successful large-scale impact. In the words of the Sioux First Nation writer and teacher Joseph M. Marshall III: "Success is rarely the result of one swell swoop, but more often a culmination of many, many small victories."