Power to the Weed

CHAPTER ONE: Turning on the Light

Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field

Genesis 3:18

If the Earth were the size of a pinhead, the known universe would still be 6 trillion miles across. Who can imagine 6 trillion miles? The astronomer Alan Dressler suggests that we express distances in terms of time using the speed of light. Our own solar system, for example, would then be "only" a few light-years across, and light from the Sun reaches us in just eight minutes.

If we were to use the same analogy for our interests in plants, the time would be less than a blink of an eye. It is, however, within that "blink" that the weed first appears and assumes such an important role in human history, and where our story is ultimately headed.

In parts of Germany today small baskets of wild strawberries are tied to the horns of cattle each spring as an offering to elves. The elves, supposedly fond of strawberries, will help bring healthy calves into the world as well as plenty of milk. A happy elf is definitely a helpful elf.

Earth Pledge, founded in 1991, has as a mission to increase "awareness about the environmental and social benefits of greening rooftops in New York City." The organization wants to encourage people to start gardens on the roofs of buildings; its purpose is to promote, among other things, locally grown foods and "cultural traditions."

While there are endless, sometimes heated, debates on exactly what should be included in any discussion of culture, there seems to be a general agreement that culture is learned. We all have a biological need to eat food, but not all of us want cereal and bananas for breakfast. That's culture.

The word "culture" comes from Latin and refers to cultivation of the soil as well as the refinement of people. If one cultivates, one is preparing the land for growing crops, for developing and improving crops, and "destroying" weeds. To cultivate friends is to develop and to nurture relationships.

Some 10,000 or 11,000 years ago humans began developing a serious interest in plants. Within a short time we were neighbors and like most long-term relationships, changes have occurred in numerous ways over the millenniums. What may be different today is that the "quality" of the plant-human relationship is likely to become more important. The six billion Homo-sapiens currently living on the "pinhead" in the universe are going to need a few good friends, not just acquaintances.

The "greening" of the roofs in New York City and the domestication of the strawberry plant during the Middle Ages represents an unbroken line that goes back thousands of years.

Too bland, too flat, too much religious fundamentalism--and of course no ocean. That was my first impression of Missouri when I moved here from South Florida in 1995. But I thought I could probably survive the experience for a year ... possibly two years if I had to. This admittedly narrow view of the "heartland" changed unexpectedly in 1998.

On a hot July day a friend of mine, a Kansan, his twenty-two year old son and I left Kansas City, heading to Boulder, Colorado, a ten-hour drive. We intended to spend a week doing some climbing in the Rockies.

Whereas eastern Kansas has rolling, undulating terrain, the farther west one gets the flatter it becomes. Soon the only sign of life that I noticed from Interstate 70 was a lot of cows, as far as you could see. I remarked that it must have been a miserable place in the winter a hundred years before--for the Plains Indians as well as for the settlers.

Many of the fence posts in western Kansas appeared to be made out of some unusual material. "What don't you see?" my friend said when I pointed it out. It took a moment before the obvious became apparent. There were no trees. The early settlers who wanted to fence in their land had to tie the barbed wire around posts made from limestone, plentiful in the area.

Climate to a farmer is of paramount importance. That may seem self-evident to almost everyone, but the fact is most of us in this country are not noticeably dependent on the weather for our survival, at least not yet. The principal "weather" question for the vast majority is whether or not we'll need to take an umbrella to work or will it be too hot to barbecue the steak outside. But it does ultimately matter to all of us.

In the summer of 2002 western Kansas suffered a disastrous drought. More than half of the farms in the state were threatened by a lack of rain that resulted in at least $270 million loss in the wheat harvest alone. Wheat also happens to be one of the first plant crops to be domesticated more than 8,000 years before in Southwest Asia. The real real concern to the Kansas farmer is not the one bad year, but the possibility of three or four bad years in a row without sufficient rain. During the Dust Bowl years of the 1930's, soil turned to fine powder. Wind-blown sand created dunes, sometimes 30 feet high. Dark dust clouds traveled all the way to the Atlantic coast. There are people out here who have personal memories of those days.

The vast emptiness, at least what seemed like emptiness to me at the time, was both hypnotic and strangely compelling, as we continued toward the foothills of the Rockies. Finally, reaching Boulder, I felt I had arrived somewhere familiar; there were mountains and trees, and I couldn't see a hundred miles in any direction.

The week in the Rockies was well worth the long drive. It brought back times when I hiked through the White Mountains of New Hampshire, climbed with my son in Oregon, or walked out the front door of my house in Quito, Ecuador, where I once lived. Quito, more than 8,000 feet above sea level, is surrounded by snow-capped mountains.

Hiking up a mountain, it seems to me, is one of those human activities you either like a lot or consider one of the dumbest things a person could do. But for me, climbing to the peak of a mountain has always been a humbling reminder of what incredible splendor nature offers.

By the time we left Colorado and entered Kansas again, I was anxious to get home. I dozed off and when I woke up we were no longer on the turnpike. "Got something you need to see," was my friend's only comment.

"Where are we?"

"Near Manhattan." Manhattan, Kansas is where Kansas State University is located, and where my friend's son was about to enter his senior year of college. We were now driving through the Kansas countryside on a two-lane road, occasionally passing a solitary car or a pickup truck.

We eventually turned onto a narrow dirt road, drove up a slight incline, then down, then back up again. For maybe another half-mile we continued on this road, until we neared a solitary oak tree, rounded a bend, and came to a halt. In front of me, extending tp the horizon, was the first tall grass prairie I had ever seen.

Birds of prey circled overhead in a cloudless, dark blue sky, eight-foot tall native grasses rippled in the breeze, and blue, purple, yellow wild flowers swept across an incredibly lush landscape. No, it was not like a sunset in the Caribbean or a fall day in New England, but in its

own unique way it was one of the most beautiful settings I've ever seen in my life. "We still in Kansas, Dorothy?" was the one thing I could think of to say.

I was now gawking at pure wildness. There was no order and no sign of human manipulation, at least the obvious kind. Michael Pollan refers to "Dionysian revelry" in his book The Botany of Desire. Wild, untamed, and natural is the only way to describe what I saw on that July day.

The scientist and conservationist Edward O. Wilson invented the term "biophilia" to describe the natural tendency of humans to be attracted to nature and to have a love or craving for it. It's supposedly instinctive. At the same time, the opposite tendency also exists, namely a little-bit-goes-a-long-way feeling: the spiders, the snakes, and all those mosquitoes, especially the ones that could be carrying malaria or West Nile virus. It may explain, in part, out inclination throughout human history to plan and to sanitize nature and to keep it within "acceptable" boundaries.

No doubt what I found so personally compelling that day in 1998, when I first saw that tall grass prairie, was the lack of order and control and above all, no one had "planted" a damn thing. Of course that likely says something about me. But much more about "natural" later.

While I didn't know it at the time, I was also staring at weeds--a lot of them. But back then I doubt I could have identified more than six or seven different plants in that prairie. The other problem was that there were no cultivated rows or flowerbeds; all those weeds were hidden, disguised, and blended into the environment. It was impossible to pick out the "foreign elements."

to be continued....