It sucks when it’s really hot. It sucks when you’re outside all day and you have to wear long sleeves because you are clamoring through seven foot tall woody shrubs. You start realizing that your brain only knows where your foot ends and not where your boot ends, so you keep tripping and almost falling into the mud below. At some point though in your grumbly stampede, you feel the sun radiating on your skin and the shrubs falling away- heaven is that you?

No, it’s a meadow.

I look around, blinded by the sudden light shift. To my left – yarrow. To my right – more yarrow. A plant that we have found so often, it is practically of no use.¹ I walk five more feet and feel myself sinking. My boot is ankle deep in mud and in order to get out, I’m forced to rely on the strength given to me by the hit workout series that my coworker and I have been tearing up in the gym – Hip Hop Abs. We plunge onward in our squishy search for a diamond in the rough. Mosquitos pimple my face as we scout for what seems like hours. The sun is scorching us, and in fear of heat exhaustion, we decide to call it and head back through the shrubs. In our retreat, one particular shrub has had enough of my stomping, and she scratches me right across the face. At this point, my frustrations reach such a high that I find myself in the midst of an inner crisis. I’m tired. I’m stinky. My protein bar has melted. My water has dirt in it, and I’m beginning to question why I even came out here.

Then, like angels coming down from the heavens, I hear the operatic voices of my darlings, Katie and Ella, as they call out, “Let’s work it on the remix.” The words strike my ears in such bliss that I am compelled to join in, and we continue to sing a perfectly-tuned rendition of “The girl, so confusing version with Lorde.” The shrubs no longer seem so tall, my thirst recedes, and as we emerge from the brush, I look around. In front of me lies blueberries – Mother Nature’s nourishment after a weary journey. I thank her for her gifts and beg for forgiveness for my tude (and the murder of her twiggy children).

Most of our days go something like this. We spend lots of time researching meadows and finding previous recordings of native plants. We drive down bumpy roads, trek through the forest in the midst of the hot summer, only to find ourselves entrenched in wet meadows. It gets really miserable. However, the magic lies in whistling while you work. I am forever grateful to have two wonderful coworkers who are always down to sing and laugh at our situation. We make up our own little songs and currently have about 12 ideas primed for an album. All this just to say that the Willamette Forest crew is staying strong. We have actually found a couple of good native plant populations, and our yarrow identification skills are breaching on mastery. We will prevail, and we will emerge not only with beautifully pressed monkey flowers and bountiful fireweed harvests, but also with an album that will (most likely) go triple platinum in every country. 

¹ I hate defining organisms as “useful” or “use,” but my limited vocabulary has me stumped. To elaborate, I disagree with the idea that nature should only be valuable when it is inherently valuable to humans. Whether that be because it’s beautiful, it has medicinal properties, or it provides some ecosystem service. I hear it all the time when people joke about extinguishing mosquitos. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve heard something along the lines of, “What purpose do they even serve? They’re annoying, they spread disease, and they’re not even a primary food source for anything.” I don’t think species protection should be based on how useful we find them. Does life not have a right to exist simply because it does?

As a lifetime east-coaster, moving across the country to Detroit, Oregon was exciting yet daunting. The Pacific Northwest was only known to me through movies (Twilight) and TV shows (Gravity Falls) – each strange in their own right. Basically to say, my expectations for Oregon were big trees, lots of moss, and maybe a vampire or two. The first two criteria were met quickly upon my arrival. As we entered the forest, I squished my nose against the passenger window trying to see the tops of the reigning conifers that lined the highways. The trees became cities with moss skyscrapers dangling from the branches and sprawling lichen suburbia along the bark. As we took the next turn, I turned to look out the front, only to be met with a landscape of devastation. The lush forest turned into a sea of scorched trees. The tree cities became post-apopalyptic, and only the skeletons of the infrastructure remained.

I knew that the forest I would be working in had experienced huge fires in 2020, but it was difficult to imagine the extent without seeing it. The next couple of weeks working in the Willamette National Forest would be drenched in fire talk. Every explanation and description seemed to be sandwiched in between some version of “before the fire” and “because of the fire.” The district I work in had 46% of its forest burned in 2020. One of the major fires of 2020 happened overnight. The fire started miles away and hit a gust of wind that blew it across the hills in a matter of hours. My coworker told me that no one could have predicted it because the area where it happened had high precipitation and moisture year round. Every model and expert denied a fire of this extent would hit the forest.

I’m usually someone who tries to see the beauty in everything, especially when it comes to nature. However, I’m beginning to question if this philosophy can apply here. Should I be trying to find a silver lining in devastation, or should I take the lack of one as a cautionary tale? During my first week here, I was able to get out into some of the burned areas, or “the black” in technical talk. It’s eerie. For miles all you see is blackened trees and mountains covered in gray sticks. Giant trees lay across the ground, charred on the outside, but the wood inside is still tan (to me they looked like big ol’ hot dogs (vegan friendly!) left over the fire too long… my coworkers did not agree). To an unassuming eye it might just look like a dreary winter landscape, but the pockets of green, lush rainforest are a constant reminder of what this landscape fostered only years ago.

There are only a handful of natives here that thrive in disturbed areas, but many invasives have been quick to take advantage of the disaster. Since we (myself and my two other coworkers, Ella and Katie) are here to collect native seeds, the number of invasives can be a bit disheartening, especially when you see how much effort goes into eradicating them. Some of them, like scotch broom, Cytisus scoparius, grow like a hydra – you kill a hundred and the next season they seem to only double. A cross section of the soil underneath would reveal the secret of their doubling act – a seed bank. Beneath the surface are horizons of seeds only waiting for their time to grow, and in doing so, they keep us on the defensive. Once the seed bank is established its pretty much impossible to eradicate the species, and it makes it even harder for native plants to become established.

The invasive species and general fire damage provide a constant reminder of why our work is important. The fires and disasters aren’t going to stop, so the more we can prepare, the better we can restore these ecosystems. I look forward to getting to know the forest as we scout and collect native seeds, and, on sunny days, I’m still keeping my eyes peeled for any glittering vampires, hoping (fearing?) they didn’t all burn up in the fire.