To the River
Good grief the saw. It's resting on my shoulder. We hold them like almost like rifles. They're heavier and higher on the body. The leather scabbards sweat oil that smears down my shirt and backpack. I don't like getting my backpack blacked up. The sticky soot smears against the zippers in an unpleasant way. It's unpleasant because it stains the light blue color. I want to keep it blue and sheen. I can't do that. That's a problem. The bigger problem is my shoulder, it screams out for help louder than the blue fabric loosing its sheen. Pulsating from shoulder to bicep is that shrieking wave of nerves I've never felt coalesce until now. Soon I must carry it at my side. The saw pendulum swings past the green and yellow bus that houses a beer bellied hippie, the over flowing lake and its stray logs upstream, and skeletal swaths of half alive tamarisk. They curl their fibrous grey nails across the patch. Always wear face covering. That's my motto. It's a new one among many mottos. Even a thin see through cloth helps buffer the harsh motherly slap of a pulled back branch. Walking through riverside underbrush of Colorado is a cruel concentration game. The player must watch the low stumps and saw as they do a lazy man's jog to the site. Each eye in a different direction is ideal. One to the ground and one to the shoulder, a human chameleon. Only a special few can do this ability. None are with me.
I mean half alive as a reality statement. Tamarisk is a bastard. Coniferous leaves, grey bark, peach stems, all a fine honed machine to keep itself five percent alive. The key is to cut them until their stumps are about level with the ground. When the twisted branches are separated from their stumps a herbicide is applied, an odorless liquid the color and consistency of Kool-Aid. After a few days, the site is covered with red coated stumps. A few days more, they're all obscured by foot travel dirt. Little leopard lizards and the red Moab cliffs are the only thing that raises in morale on these slogs of days. Everyone works far apart, conversation obscured by brush or the shrill groan of chainsaws. Cool relief comes below the cottonwoods, sitting by a few young workers cutting out the tamarisk with handsaws. Each day I sit on the ground and spray stumps on request. Though soon this too becomes mere fantasy. The worksite moves to less shaded areas. Protection from the sun disappears with each loud shred through the invasive brush. Willows sag in mourning to their lost support. Many get snapped by the constant pass throughs of workers. The clearing gets bigger with each hour. Jagged burn piles, flipped cow chips, stranded kindling, it's all there. A torn site. A deadened clearing. All things chopped, flattened, strewn out. No order. Remnants of slow chaos. Wasteland of the botany's damned.