Prairie Management as Spiritual Discipline

Yesterday I spend the better part of two hours and a full tank of gas/oil mix in the power trimmer assaulting volunteer saplings in the field.  It is a formidable undertaking that has no end in sight.  Some of the species I recognize -- osage orange (from the thorns), cedar (from the smell), walnut (actually, just a guess) -- while others are mysteries.  In fact, given my larger measure of arboreal ignorance, I could be cutting down things I will later regret.  But I am more interested in prairie than forest in this particular area, and so the saplings need to go.

And I get the concept.  Given the 7 or 8 (I lose count) 5-gallon buckets-full of walnuts I have collected from beneath a single tree in the front yard and relocated with, again, no end in sight; given the hedge apples still waiting to fall in a veritable hailstorm of green and knobby orbs, I am only surprised that derivative saplings aren't taking over the world.

That said, there are plenty -- many of them nowhere near their sources.  Squirrels or rabbits or birds or deer or the wind itself -- or all of the above -- have scattered the seeds far and wide, some number of which obviously taking root.  There will be more such days to spend; more such gallons of fuel to burn if my interventions are to mean anything at all.

The whole process, however, has me thinking about other infiltrations that silently and, for a time, invisibly take root where one least expects them.  Habits, I suppose, I am thinking about primarily -- good ones, but more glaringly bad ones.  In their infancy, a mower can knock them over -- or a good, firm yank; before long a shovel is required, or the trimmer I was so violently wielding yesterday.  But in a surprisingly short span of time, the trunk of the things have thickened and deepened to the point that more extreme measures are required -- a chain saw, at the very least.  Eradication, to say it another way, benefits from early detection and early response.

And so I cut...and ponder, amazed at all the noxious sprigs I discover growing within and without.  And the field's experience is as humbling for a person of spiritual consideration as it is daunting:  this fact that there is, as I mentioned, no end in sight.

No end to the noticing, the truncating, and the bundling of all the detritus that needs hauling away.