Transplantation

We're on the steps of Mount Diablo, a beautiful four-thousand foot bump overlooking Walnut Creek and the Bay Area. Dow AgroSciences are blessing us with a 125 gallon concoction made of Transline, an herbicide for the control of broadleaf weeds. The enemy in question is yellow starthistle, which blankets the grasslands of northern California and ruthlessly strangles out native vegetation. Starthistle arrived via alfalfa seed contamination from the Balklans and now rules many miles with little hope of letting up.


That's my gloved hand there letting out the four-hundred foot hose to work a stretch of rangeland. The ground is tore up pretty fierce in some places where feral pigs, also introduced (obviously! from the Russians and Spaniards), have ripped the shit out of the earth with sharp cloven hooves. Further down the ridge wild turkeys are gobbling loudly cos it's mating season and the gobblers are all tricked out trying to attract the positive attentions of some hens (also introduced by the Spanish, thanks! with an origin of yes! Turkey!).

And so we have the generator on and pump running, spraying out gallons of blue-dyed herbicide into the grasslands. A few coyotes are hanging out by a rabbit hole down the trail, very unconcerned as to what we're doing. The Bay's spandex community of bikers are drudgingly climbing the mountain, each with a million-sponsored jersey and every conceivable gadget, up-to-date in every possible way as they time their heart rate and circuit length on this, their 800th ascent of Mount Diablo. I love biking, but there's something severely perverted about today's techni-decked road bikers on $5,000 jobs financed by the stock market. Sometimes I get the feeling that simplicity is gone and won't return anytime soon.

I also think about nativity and subsequent homeland ownership and find that I struggle formulating an opinion on who holds the rights. Sometimes I think of the Holy Land, but rarely, and then of America a nation of once non-native immigrants. And more, the originally occurring flora and fauna of the lands I know, fighting the fight with non-natives and invasives.

How long does it take before we're home, before we belong? Take all the pride of one with generations back in the same place, is that really something to brag about, or is it more to unease the veritable newcomers? I can feel the pride... though my roots don't go much further than the bend. I can also see... there's a light in the immigrant eyes that we misplaced long ago.