Chamise, the Woolsey Fire, Fucked-Up Priorities, and Gratitude

As you may know from my last blog-post, I’ve effectively adopted a little Chamise plant that lives in a fissure atop a sandstone outcropping in the hills overlooking my neighborhood. For the past year or so, I’ve fawned over this little guy like a doting parent, showering him with attention and water and protecting him against foreign invaders intent on claiming and occupying his homey crack. While other nearby plants have either withered or retreated into dormancy during what seems like perpetual drought, mi chamisa has flourished. He bloomed late into the season this year and is looking quite robust despite his rather harsh and austere surroundings.

So when the Woolsey Fire raced through the area and ravaged the local hillsides, I thought of mi chamisa and was immediately sick with worry. I realize how quirky and perhaps douchey it may sound to be worried about a single fucking plant while entire neighborhoods and biomes are burning. But I’ve invested a lot of emotional capital in this single plant, and rightly or wrongly, I was concerned about him.  If that makes me sound like a crackpot with misplaced priorities, I suppose that’s only because I’m a crackpot with misplaced priorities. I accept that.

So last Friday night, I raced home after work and scampered up the familiar trail in the fading light to do a welfare check on my friend. As I climbed the trail, a heaviness fell upon me. Both sides of the trail were charred black and the odor of smoke still hung heavy in the air. Most of the vegetation, including the despised Russian Thistle, had been completely obliterated by the flames. The landscape was deathly still and devoid of life. I wondered about the Western Toads I had inexplicably seen trailside before all hell broke loose. I was astonished they were there in the first place. What could possibly be their fate now?

Lost in thought and feeling a bit melancholy, I crested the ridge to discover that the trail sign and wooden bench were still there and intact. Stunned, I stood there for a brief moment trying to process what I was seeing. Everything around the bench and trail sign was completely gone, but they were still there. I hurried to the top of the hill where the sandstone outcropping sits, approaching it reverentially and with some hesitancy. Now that I was there, I wasn’t really sure whether I wanted to see what I had come to look at. But I quickly noticed that the rounded top of this hillock seemed to have avoided the worst of the flames. It was hard to tell for certain in the dusky darkness, but I thought I could detect living, breathing plants as I made my way up the spur to the summit.

At the base of the sandstone outcropping, I readied my flashlight and scurried to the top. Hesitating for a moment, I surveyed the cliff edge before turning on the light. I could see something in the darkness, but I couldn’t tell if it was alive or dead. I asked the universe for a miracle and then switched on the light. And there he was, mi chamisa, sitting there stoically in the sandstone crack as he always had, untouched by the flames.

I was overwhelmed by emotion. Tears began to well up but I held them back. Nobody was around to see, but I still felt a bit embarrassed about getting weepy over a solitary plant. I texted my daughter 400 miles away to tell her that mi chamisa had survived. She responded immediately with relief telling me that she had seen the destruction in the burn areas and had been thinking about my Chamise. She is her father’s daughter. She has inherited my idiosyncrasies.

I quickly pulled some water from my pack and offered some to my friend. He gratefully accepted. I then sat alone in the inky stillness sipping a beer and feeling content. Sometimes, the universe delivers.

How I Became a Guerrilla Soldier in the War on Russian Thistle

There is a rocky sandstone prominence in the hills above my house that I hike to virtually every night. I generally pack some cheese and a can of beer and sit up on this outcropping to watch darkness creep over the landscape as the light dies in the west. My throne is pretty damn barren and inhospitable…it’s rock after all. But it is fractured and creased in places and some of those crevices collect and hold a bit of sandy soil.

In one of those crevices, life has implausibly taken hold. A solitary Chamisa has sprouted from the sandstone and against all odds, is somehow eking out an existence. I’ve become quite attached to this little Chamisa for some reason, and I’ll share some water with him occasionally to make sure he gets through the long, Southern California dry season. He’s my buddy, at least in my mind, and I’ve become obsessed with checking on his health every time I go into the hills.

One day when I went to visit, I noticed he had an unwanted neighbor. A Russian Thistle had taken hold in the crack and was threatening to hog all the water I provided and to crowd out mi chamisa. Furious, I yanked the invader from the crack roots and all and tossed it unceremoniously over the edge of the outcropping. It relinquished its hold in the crack surprisingly easily.

Russian Thistle, a non-native invasive, is pervasive in the hills of Southern California. I’ve always known it was there, but like Black Mustard, it is so ubiquitous and so integrated into in the landscape that I never gave it much attention.  But after my clash with it on the sandstone outcropping, I took a hard look at the areas immediately adjacent to the trail leading to and from the prominence. The area is carpeted with the offending stuff. It’s easy to spot right now because it blooms in late summer-early fall and consequently is one of the few plants that is currently green.

That’s when it hit me. I was going to yank some of that shit out. I knew getting rid of all of it was a fantastic crack-pipe dream, a moron’s errand, but I figured eliminating it from portions of the trail was a battle I might be able to win. So, the following weekend, I bought sexy-looking black pick-axe from Lowe’s and became a guerrilla soldier in the war on Russian Thistle.

Later that night, I packed leather gloves, water, and beer into my pack, grabbed my new implement of death, and headed for the hills. At first, I was a bit reticent about hiking with a pick-axe, not knowing how folks would react. I thought maybe someone might challenge whether my removal of non-native invasives had been appropriately “sanctioned” by whomever it is that sanctions these types of activities. I got a few curious looks, but nobody said shit. I guess I looked official. In reality, I was just some beer-swilling dude with a fucking vendetta.

Since that day, I’ve removed thistle from the area surrounding the sandstone rock on which mi chamisa resides as well as the upper stretches of the trail leading to the outcropping. I honestly don’t know whether my efforts will have any positive effect, but I figure at a minimum, I’m giving space for native plants to sweep in and re-occupy the areas that were being hogged by the thistle. Beyond that, it just makes me feel happy and satisfied. And best of all, the crack that mi chamisa calls home remains Russian Thistle free.