After taking the Water Stories Core Course last year, this month I joined a wonderful group of volunteers for a week to support their East Coast team with whatever they needed as they built two earthen ponds and connected them to a third.
Witnessing the genesis of a pond, I began to see its “anatomy” emerge in my mind’s eye—the key, dam, spillway, slopes, and terraces taking shape from what still looked like an oversized puddle—as the team constantly surveyed the site with a rotary laser and used machinery to work with the geology of place.
Watching the Water Stories team at work, I began to understand pond building as a constant interplay of harvesting, layering, and compacting materials; knowing where different soil layers lie; and continually moving, communicating, and adapting as a team.
Because it rained almost every day, we spent considerable time guiding water out of the construction area so the ground could be shaped and compacted—learning firsthand how one tiny channel can redirect water, connect drainage patterns, or obstruct its flow entirely. Over time, the ponds will fill with water, vegetation, and life, transforming the surrounding landscape by holding water longer and allowing it to slowly rehydrate the land.
I’m very grateful for this experience and for Bio4Climate’s generosity in supporting me to deepen my understanding through hands-on participation. I’m also still completing the Core Course assignments, which continue to expand my understanding of the water cycle and importance of reading the landscape.
Learn more about Water Stories at waterstories.com and explore their incredible collection of educational resources on YouTube.
Alexandra Ionescu is the Associate Director of Regenerative Projects at Biodiversity for a Livable Climate, where she leads the Miyawaki Forest Program—supporting the planting of miniforests, cultivating partnerships, and guiding strategic planning—and recently curated the inaugural 2025 Northeast Miniforest Summit. Her work focuses on urban afforestation using the Miyawaki Method, education around beaver-engineered landscapes, and floating wetlands that combine art with ecological functionality. A lifelong student of how nature works, her mindset—shaped by graduate education in Biomimicry from Arizona State University and Nature–Culture–Sustainability Studies from the Rhode Island School of Design—is about cultivating propensities for the web of life to emerge. Her practice brings together the implementation of nature-based solutions, knowledge activation, curation, writing, photography, and strategic, as well as creative direction. She is a Certified Biomimicry Professional, and in 2025 she further deepened her ecological understanding through the Water Stories Core Course, a training focused on water-cycle restoration and decentralized water retention systems.