Over the past few months I’ve spent a minimum of 23 full days counting individual plants, and their flowers or flowering stems. That equates to 184 hours on hands and knees picking through scratchy weedy grasses, blackberry canes and poison oak to find various rare plants. Most recently my co-worker Christine and I just finished doing a complete census of a listed species of daisy called Erigeron decumbens on each of our many wetland prairie sites.
Doing this much intensive and detail-oriented monitoring has been a challenge. The thoughts that go through my head during particularly long stretches of flower-counting most resemble my experience of jogging. At first, I convince myself that it will fly by… but not too long after I find myself calculating progress versus length of road ahead or transects left to count and finally digress into an internal battle to keep moving forward. There is usually a fleeting moment when I question a few life choices and fantasize about a desk job, or even my past as a bartender / waitress. I bribe myself with sips of coffee and the occasional stretch in an effort to ignore sore knees and the sharp florets poking through my socks and into my ankle bones. I agonize over my ability to detect each tiny plant and constantly push myself to look closer. My muscles strain and my mind wanders… only 30 more to go…
About this time I have passed the half way point. My movements become more efficient and calculated and I find relative peace knowing that the hardest part is over. My mind loosens it’s fixation on the end and allows me to push through. In the final stretches, I bask in the glow of hard-earned accomplishment. Once I take my last step / stoop to count the last plant I feel as though I could keep going and going, my mind fully surrendered to the task just completed.
I’ve never meditated much but I imagine that the struggle to quiet one’s mind is similar to that of careful monotonous counting. In the end, my work equates to a few rows and columns of data; a collection of numbers to better know the trajectory of these rare species. As we walk to the car I notice my internal dialog with each step…1,2,3,4… I’m caught in a loop of numbers and when I close my eyes I can see those delicate leaves, the bashful flowering stem, and a particular shade of green that separates one plant from another in my mind’s eye.
Erigeron decumbens