I lost 2 pounds of weight in 4 days. And I did it dealing with a Trinidad Roseau (bactris major) clump. It might be interesting to market the “Roseau diet”.

Roseau is, in my best description, weaponized chlorophyll. It’s nature’s answer to botanical warfare, designed specifically to keep out invasive species. Like mammals. Like humans. Like… me. Those spikes that you see in the photo break off from the stalks very easily. They go through the ‘cut proof’ gloves with relative impunity. And they cling together, thumbing their metaphorical noses at the Hedgehog’s Dilemma.

I loved every minute of battling it, and I’m almost a little sad that I’ve gotten rid of most of the clump, on the downhill slope of the battle that it is losing. The only casualty I’ve had is 50 feet of rope (264 lb test) that failed while I was pulling down some with the pickup, “Artsy”.

During the last days of battle, I’d come out of the bush – jersey and pants soaked with sweat. “Picker” from other plants, those annoying seeds that cling to you, all over my clothing and in my hair. I had half a mind to go into a Starbucks down here, order a coffee and sit down while writing in a notebook just to offend a few people, but I was too tired to bother.

There are people all over the world, sitting in offices, spending money on gym memberships, paying tanning salons… when all you have to do… is go outside and work on some land.

Thoreau was onto something good:

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.

— Henry David Thoreau.

Yes, you’re breathing, but when last have you lived?