The Motherline was first envisioned in 2021 in the aftermath of COVID.  A small group of women (some of us mothers) joined together to heal the isolation and disconnection, and as we met for dance each week, we began to sense the power and energy that our connection engendered.  We now work together on youth arts and agriculture programs, environmental projects, community-based art, and on our vision of Rural ReciProsperity.

We revolve around our youth programs.  The RiverStars Performing Arts has been providing free dance, theater, and leadership classes to all ages of kids, for almost 15 years. We have become a home for youth needing belonging, even as they learn creative skills and put on performances that touch the hearts of both the performers and the audience.  Shy children learn to find their voices, hesitant children learn to dance, and long-term teen participants gradually learn to lead the children’s classes.

Cultivate Kids is our free youth community garden program, which happens each week at the Cave Junction Farmers’ Market.  Kids who have never gardened before learn sustainable farming practices and enjoy the fruits (and herbs, and vegetables) of their labor.  They are learning to enjoy a tangible connection with the earth through tending the gardens, which grow in abundance each year, much to the excitement and amazement of the kids. 

Motherliners have also created a platform for environmental outreach, our Purposeful Actions To Heal (PATHs).  We are currently working on The Clean Sweep, a historic project with the goal of cleaning up all of the trash on the public lands in the Illinois Valley watershed.  In the summer of 2025, we have so far picked up and disposed of about 100,000 lbs of trash, including household waste, old furniture, pieces of cars and RVs, appliances, and tires.  And, in true Motherline style, each cleanup event is a hub for community connection, with a large and diverse cadre of volunteers coming together to share food and plans at the end of each day.  We also operate an annual free tire recycling day, through which we have collected and removed around 6,000 tires from our watershed.   

In addition to our regular end-of-season dance-theater performances at our Earth Day Cabaret (largely for the RiverStars, but Motherline shares the stage), our much anticipated Halloween performances, and our performances at the weekly Cave Junction Farmers’ Market, The Motherline has also created a short film The Motherground, which connects the woman body to the earth body in a dreamy and surreal mother’s adventure story.  The Motherline has been screened at the Wild Rivers Film Festival in Brookings, Oregon, and will be shown at the Eugene Environmental Film Festival in October 2025.

THE Halloween Carnival is one Motherline’s highlights of the year!  The first event in 2024 was a fabulous day of carnival games, hayrides, haunted gardens, pumpkin contests, prizes, and so much more.  And as we prepare for our second annual event we are creating new and improved games, many made as a donation by the Girls Build youth camp, and lining up all the attractions to make the second THE Halloween Carnival even bigger than the first!

In addition to local classes, projects, and events, The Motherline has an online offering, toward the goal of sharing our planet protective work more widely.  We are now presenting our “Homestead Help” series of videos, where our Motherliners share details of homestead skills, to inform and inspire future and current homesteaders.  The films are carefully prepared and artfully produced, giving us a library of unrivaled high-quality educational offerings inside our online membership.  The online membership allows like-hearted souls who may not live nearby to join The Motherline and share in our community.

All of The Motherline’s work is toward furthering our vision of Rural ReciProsperity.  Rural Reciprosperity is an organizing principle, or guiding compass, to bring the Illinois Valley’s broad range of service organizations and small businesses into greater cooperation with each other.  Based on the wonderful quote from “Braiding Sweetgrass” that “All Flourishing is Mutual”, we are working together to increase economic opportunities within our valley, by improving our stewardship of our people and our natural environment.