Ringtail squashed flat by the forces of time, entropy, gravity, and gnawing teeth pulling what they can from the bone. Orange jacket is not the best thing for camouflage so when the ranger calls from the road saying it’s best not to be up in that area because it disturbs the wildlife I’m wondering if they mean the ghosts too? 

I tell them I’m collecting trash, which is true, but something holds me back from telling them about the Ringtail hide still in good shape if a little flattened just off the deer trail below the top of the slab. I actually see them again at the top of the ridge trash bag in hand through pure coincidence and they were like, Oh? Word you’re not lying – as a good thing, and I still didn’t mention the Ringtail. Didn’t even think of it till I got home and looked them up. The civet cat. 

Ringtails live in the cliffs dropping off the backside of the ridge. I saw one years later in the same spot where if you run uphill like looney tunes you’ll soon find yourself with 60 feet of air beneath your feet. Pinon Pine and Juniper. Boulders large enough to live beneath. I remember meeting dudes living in tents beneath the cliff face and saying it was a little slice of heaven. I tried to coach their expectations since the tent was visible from the gated community next to the city park and it was only a  matter of time. 

They had a notice from the rangers by the end of the day. I don’t think the police HOT team even had to come out but I never saw them again. The Ringtail is still there. Looks a little like a fox but more closely related to the racoon, they live in sandstone castles. As predators, they occupy the niche below Mountain Lion in the food chain across land too rocky for the fox to run.

The next time I returned along the frontage road on the deer path the Ringtail carcass was still there, but more decayed. No longer museum quality. I feel like I failed by not preserving it for people to see and raise awareness of its actual existence. Instead it decomposes into the edged grasses, red/quartz sandstone mix with a few scrub oak and ponderosas leading back to the top. I still wear the orange coat but fail to meet the ranger as I make the rounds picking up trash, volunteering to clear the land of what it doesn’t need, and leaving behind what it does.

In the partial field beneath the pines, ash, linden, maple, and wee baby oak on the edge by itself, there is grass left over from when the property had first been developed to look golf-course-adjacent. Deer love the remainder of the Tennessee bluegrass growing long amongst long-dead stalks of mountain lettuce chopped. The human weedwacker’s path and the path of the deer’s teeth coincide, overlapping in the perception of the land’s receptors. Grass cut is grass cut and the overly pernicious regionally but not locally native plant[factcheck] has been long dead without using pesticide, electric weedwacker for the win.

The dead annuals and brow grasses cut back to allow other plants, butterfly weed, to see sun in the summer, but also fire danger. It’s not a coincidence that the lower effort methods needed to cull pseudo-invasives coincides with fire mit best practices.

The problem is that we need to figure out how to mitigate risk when it’s impossible to guarantee absolute protection from wildfire? There’s fuel all around, but if you bulldoze everything in a twenty foot circle around your house, you’re doing enough enough in most circumstances, but you risk creating dead zones where no life or crops can form, or extra work for feeding, or landscape that adds fuel back into the danger zone by making the firebreaks smaller. There is easy logic here but it all exists at conflicting angles. The more fire safe you make a house, in certain respects, the more damage, impact, and destruction can occur to the surrounding natural environment. And the more an environment degrades the more you see the risk of scavenger species thriving rise. Cue mice, et al.

Of course, the more mice the better for the hawks if the mice they catch don’t have mouse poison in their belly.

So we don’t bulldoze everything, in this theoretical sandboxed property, and even if we did and it didn’t hurt the ecosystem the risk of erosion itself is reason enough to keep root systems in play when possible. Not to mention canopy and shading layers of plants keep more moisture in the ground, keeping plants and trees healthier, more resilient to drought and imminent fire damage.  

This was pointed out to the property owner and I one day when an Arborist with a capital “A” visited and noted that the reason the pines were extra-stressed wasn’t just the draught conditions but the fact the deciduous tree west of them on the property was storm damaged the previous year and died, opening up what was once the groves interior trunks to sunlight for the first time, and the once shaded forest floor to harsh afternoon light. They said this was often seen as a domino effect when a western most tree in a forest dies the next trees east become the new buffer trees for environmental stresses, but because that tree up as an interior tree they have to lean into their reserves to survive the transition’s shock. If the tree’s reserves don’t outlast the environmental stresses it can spell catastrophe for the grove. Lucky for us, we have water on tap and wisdom at our beck and call. 

When I say this to the property owner after the arborist leaves with their dog chilling in the back seat of the truck they remind me of hubris, and tell me to step off that high horse. Just because we know the problem doesn’t mean it’s so easy to solve. They were thinking ahead to their upcoming water bill. I let them rant for a minute, then reminded them that the arborist’s solution was to pay me to water weekly, that the cost was even higher if they expected me to do the watering for them. This sobered them up for a bit, and then we went for coffee.

We’ve now entered the era of whiplash weather.

Record highs followed by drought followed by gentle rain that is unseasonable only that, for my lifetime at least, we almost never get rain for at least another 1-2 months. People move here from out of state and see February as the normal time, cue the wisdom of Punxsutawney Phil, but growing up playing hockey, I always felt the spring thaw started in May, not February.

Now it’s March and we’ve had rain. Nice to get the moisture. Thank you cloud gods for parking it overhead in such a gentle way. The big concern was rebound flood after drought causes hydrophobic soil to run off instead of soak up, meaning instead of getting the necessary, we lose the irreplaceable. 

I’m not saying soil restoration isn’t possible, more that the specific microbiome that evolved in that particular niche has degrees of uniqueness that are impossible to replicate.

It’s also impossible to be impacting lifeforms lower on the food chain in anything but a net-chaotic level of ethics. This time of year every footstep potentially crushes a new plant: so let’s make a path and stick to it. Every weed removed now risks disrupting a hibernating grub or spider or queen ant; root systems that are shallow but overlap with pockets of air undersoil are perfect homes for certain creatures. It’s a nonzero level of probability that at some point, what I do as a gardener hurts something else.

Fall clean up can happen in the spring but spring clean up can not happen in the fall. To do either in the winter simply flattens into one but not the other. 

To be clear, to define these tasks. Fall clean up is the work done after the first freeze to prepare the garden for overwintering. There is a theoretical perfect time of year to do this that does the most good for the garden’s human interests and the least harm to the overwintering insect population. But essentially any garden work is going to have layers of insect death. The question is is it enough to hurt a species or ultimately help encourage scavengers, instead. 

Example: if I kill a spider does its death help produce food for scavengers, which in turn add to the soil health, adding to plant health, adding to the net gain of healthy biomass for the garden, or does killing the spider prevent a necessary spider from fulfilling its niche of keeping harmful insects in check? In other words, does killing a spider mean another spider takes its place or is there a vacuum left in the ecosystem?

And at what point are we just being hubristic with all this killing spiders talk?

Let’s get this out up front. Voles are a problem if you have an ornamental garden. If you have fruit trees. Mulberry. Squirrels are problematic when they eat apricot bark. Plum bark. When I ask someone from the neighborhood who has been gardening longer than me they shrugged and said it was just part of the cycle and the squirrels never hurt their apple tree.

I share this in the context of both questioning my own fear, my neighbor’s wisdom dismissing that fear fairly, and whatever the experts have to say as soon as I get around to asking them.

I mention voles because it’s the same problem as with the squirrels. The human habitat and the natural habitat overlap because the humans push into new space and the animals push back.

The squirrels eat the cambium off the fruit tree bark when they are pregnant. The voles create tunnels that add airgaps to trees roots. They’re building homes, and finding food. Neither of these things are inherently that different from what humans do when they need food and shelter. Except it’s more like taking your neighbors bread from his fridge without asking and then sleeping over on his couch. It’s still just competition for overlapping control of space.

You think it’s humans vs. nature but it’s actually a free for all. How does the apricot feel about the squirrel eating away its protective layers? Does its bark getting eaten mean the inner wood dries out, exposing it to insects that further harm the tree? Does the tree care one way or another is the question that might be asked next except the real question is does the tree do anything at all? Can we officially declare the tree alive, part of this larger experiment we call life?

I think trees think. I think they think very slowly, and use mycelium networks to interact within a larger grove. Mycelium is like the tree’s internet. So if they think, if they care at all about anything, how do they feel about their bark being eaten away by the squirrel? The vole girdling roots. Humans breaking branches and felling forests for food and shelter and profit, too?

Before we go down that rabbit hole too much, if we’re going to claim trees have wisdom worth pondering from afar, we should add an element from the other end of the evolutionary spectrum: the habitually online human.

I recently saw a comment on social media from someone asking, in a very specific context but accidentally framed as a generalization, “What is the probability that I die?”

The answer was, “100%.” We’re all going to die, and this… overlaps with tree’s wisdom about the squirrels. I may not be ready but the tree’s attitude is 100% chance of life is worth it, and yet, still, someday it all ends. Often chaotically.

You might understand but I don’t expect the voles or squirrels will. The vole’s wisdom is bullheaded: push forward and conquer. The only reason they’re not ruling the world is they got their niche and they like it. 

The squirrel on the other hand, the pregnant one eating cambium, has no qualms. When questioned by a higher power about the possibility of their actions leading to the tree’s death, they say piss off. Squirrel baby needs nutrients. 

This is anthropomorphizing and only interesting if we look at the inverse, too. The squirrels driven to give their progeny the best chance they can. Whatever’s in the trees cambium that they crave sure sounds like a trait that happens in humans during pregnancy, too.

What if, in trying to act separate, we’re preventing ourselves from recognizing the wisdom, and idiocy, of not thinking of others? Not treating others like we ourselves like to be treated.

Maybe the end goal shouldn’t be to be more like squirrels or voles, but to be like trees.

Willing to help others because it adds sweetness to life. Even if at the cost of our own self-involvement.

(The above excerpted from a letter sent by property owner to gardener. Arguing for a 12% pay cut, for the greater good. “Do what the trees would do!”, hand written at the top in red ink.)