Invasive Species

Over the weekend I had a good friend ask me about my writing and when the next installment was coming. And my answer was, essentially, that I want to write more but the content I want to write about involves the current themes threading through my life. And those themes are the same recurring lessons I've already written about. In fact, the things I think about and want to write about are the same lessons I've learned and the discoveries that came from those lessons – as always wrapped up with a bow and put up on the shelf in my mind (recurring theme). Remember I figured it all out! (recurring theme) And isn't there a saying about beating a dead horse in there somewhere? I know sometimes I do feel like a dead horse beating myself over the head again and again.

Then I remembered something from a book that I read:

“So what if we repeat the same themes? So what if we circle around the same ideas, again and again, generation after generation? So what if every generation feels the same ways and asks the same questions that we've all been feeling and asking for years?”
- Elizabeth Gilbert

Clearly, we humans haven't quite mastered the answers to these questions or found an antidote to these feelings. I suppose the feeling and the asking are part of what makes us human, repeated as necessary.

Recently I've been volunteering at the Wind Wolves Preserve just outside of town. Functioning entirely through donations and volunteer support, it is the west coast's largest non-profit preserve. I have the opportunity to help the Rangers and Naturalists with trail maintenance, seed collection, invasive species control and native plant restoration. On my most recent trip out to help, the Rangers were tending to an invasive species called the Tamarisk tree. Armed with my sack lunch and hiking gear, I hopped in Ranger Travis' truck for a 45 minute ride on a bumpy dirt road out to the backcountry of the 93,000 acre property to a place called Santiago Creek.

These trees are a problem. Tamarisk's extensive root system extracts sodium chloride, or salt, from deep within the ground. Over a period of years, the plant effectively changes the natural chemistry of the soil. Native trees and plants can no longer thrive in the salt-saturated environment. The opportunistic tamarisk can also grow 9 to 12 feet in a single season and is a water hog, causing serious depletion of the groundwater.

Bad tree, bad.

Our job for the day was to walk for hours along a mostly dry creek bed, searching for these meddling little buggers and taking care of business. After a bit of instruction I was handed a pair of loppers and off we went. While Ranger Travis carried the chainsaw and donned heavy safety gear, Ranger Matt led the way carrying the herbicide pack and chemical gloves. Amongst the Jurassic Park movie quotes casually thrown between Matt and Travis I learned most of the above details about this interfering tree. The Rangers had been to this location a few weeks prior to spray herbicide on the tiny seedlings that had popped up all over the dry creek bed like the face of an acne suffering teenager. The remains of the blue tinted chemical had faded in the sun but were unmistakable. But we weren't to touch these baby Tamarisks. We were looking for their larger counterparts that had not yet been tended to. These ranged in size from waist high to taller than me and just as wide – dense thickets of slender branches with scale-like leaves that overlap each other along the stem.

I was tasked with bending down to the base of the tree and lopping off all the branches that were thin enough for my tool to handle. Travis would use the chainsaw on anything larger and then Matt and I would drag the branches to the edge of the creek bed and throw them out of the riparian zone (which is basically the area on the bank of the river/creek and yes I learned what that was that day). The branches are spiny and stick to one another and anything else they happen to grab along the way. It was hard work. Then Matt would use a special herbicide, also dyed blue, on the freshly cut tree stumps. We walked and we talked (which in this case meant me asking a million questions and them patiently answering) and I bent and I cut and we carried and we threw and then we did it all over again. And then again. We did this for hours and it led me to wonder a bit more about these trees and this process.

As the Rangers explained to me, some of the trees were dealt with using only a small squirt of liquid (the babies) and some needed more force using tools and saws and strength. This all depended on their size and impact on the creek. And it was never ending. Until some magic solution is found to eliminate this habitat's invaders, the maintenance of these unwanted threats will always be a part of this beautiful environment. There will always be new shoots sprouting up after the rains dwindle. There will always be larger trees soaking up the “good stuff” away from the native species that were missed in previous trips. And there will also be large areas of the habitat still left to discover and certainly more invasive trees to take care of (did I mention 93,000 acres?).

And it was in this long day of hard work in the sun, among a beautiful landscape, that I was reminded of my own lessons – a metaphor, if you will, for these themes I keep beating into that horse of mine.

The concepts of living more authentically, change is hard and here to stay, loving oneself completely, letting go of the past and forgiving myself, vulnerability is not weakness, be patient with myself – these are the Tamarisk trees that keep popping up in my life. Each time I forget one of these truths is like those little invasive species popping up in my creek bed. So I lop it off, carry it away and douse the remaining roots with herbicide. And every time I'm frustrated and disappointed to see a new Tamarisk in my path. It appears I'm going to need to revisit these invasive species of my life over and over again. Some of them are little babies I can quickly splash with herbicide and some are larger that I expect I will have to continue to lop off and carry away again and again. But I'm getting better at it. I'm learning to spot those trees in my path and getting lots of exercise and practice in. After all I plan to treat my brain like the muscle that it is – getting stronger through resistance and exposure and training.

“Most big transformations come about from the hundreds of...

steps we take along the way.” - Lori Gottlieb

And just like that beautiful canyon we walked through that day, I am no less lovely for having a few “weeds” in my creek bed that keep coming up without an invitation.