I arrived at the sanctuary properly armed\u2014a Swedish bush ax\u2014an extraordinarily crafted and effective hand tool that basically amounts to a wooden baseball bat with a curved blade at the top. A flimsy machete can’t compare to this weapon of close quarter, blackberry destruction. I had slayed acres and acres of the Himalayan invader on the wildlife refuge with these axes and gifted myself with one when I left. I hadn’t wielded it in ten long years.<\/p>\n
The sun was out but losing interest. Bonnie and Clyde worked our way through some newly planted trees along the river. Blackberries threatened their survival and I was hacking and hacking to release the trees from their thorny bondage. The muscle memory of using the ax quickly returned, but a few minutes into battle, I realized that most everything was wrong: I had not sharpened the blade, I wore the wrong shoes, I wore the wrong pants, I wore the wrong coat, and was in fact absurdly wearing a bulky pea coat!<\/p>\n
I had forgotten so much.<\/p>\n
How does one come to remember something worth remembering? I thought about that as I sliced away.<\/p>\n
It started raining but I kept cutting. There would never be a shortage of invasive blackberries on the Oregon Coast to vanquish. The pea coat came off and I hung it on the branch of a Sitka spruce.<\/p>\n
Bonnie and Clyde nosed around, doing their dog things, but they seem disinterested in my labor. At one point, they flopped down in the wet grass and watched the river.<\/p>\n
I sweated my through two shirts but kept hacking.<\/p>\n
An hour went by. The rain let up. I let up.<\/p>\n
I looked at my hands: scrapes and scratches like the glory days on the refuge. Blood drawn. I had at least done one thing right\u2014no gloves. You can’t grip the ax with surety with gloves. You have to expose your hands and grip the wood tight. You can swing for the fences that way.<\/p>\n
It was time to go. I roused Bonnie and Clyde from their slumber, gave them some treats, and drank water from a bottle. I was soaked, steaming and covered in mud. I donned the pea coat and we made our way back to the house.<\/p>\n
I would be perfectly prepared the next time I went into battle. I’ll be perfectly prepared for the rest of my life.<\/p>\n
(If you found this post enjoyable, thought provoking or enlightening, please consider supporting a writer at work by making a financial contribution to this blog or by purchasing an NSP book.) <\/i><\/p>\n\n I arrived at the sanctuary properly armed\u2014a Swedish bush ax\u2014an extraordinarily crafted and effective hand tool that basically amounts to a wooden baseball bat with a curved blade at the top. A flimsy machete can’t compare to this weapon of close quarter, blackberry destruction. I had slayed acres and acres of the Himalayan invader on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3691,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[203,5],"tags":[318,206,40,13,381],"class_list":["post-3690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bonnie-and-clyde-files","category-meditations","tag-blackberries","tag-dog-sanctuary","tag-dogs","tag-oregon-coast","tag-senior-dogs","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3690"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3690\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3693,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3690\/revisions\/3693"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}