The Brooks-Fisher parking lot became an ice rink for Moses and Maggy one snowy morning.
The five stages of grieving keep coming into my thoughts, in a way that just so happens to coincide with icier and snowier weather. This change in conditions has made a normally easy and carefree commute into a veritable minefield of slips and falls, and reminds me of one of the greatest constants in life: gravity always wins. Any day I spend on a trail maintenance crew is a perfect case-in-point of this rule, when one misplaced step or loss of balance sends me through all five grieving stages within a second.
It starts with denial, thinking that there’s no way I’m falling and that there’s still a chance to save myself by readjusting. Anger sets in when I realize what’s happening, and I resent that powdery snow that looked stable but wasn’t. I don’t have time to be angry though – I start bargaining by flailing my arms, trying to grab onto anything that will keep me up, whether a tree branch or my fellow conservation corps. Doing this is obviously futile, but it’s a reflex, and when flailing doesn’t work, the depression stage sets in. At this point I know that all I have left is to keep falling and get buried in the snow, but I’m not ready to make friends with the ground. Once I do, and I’ve made an impromptu snow angel, all I have left is to stare up into the sky and reach the final stage: acceptance. When I accept slipping onto the ground, I come to terms with this place as my resting spot for the next minute or so before I get up and continue my day. My trail partners don’t share this sentiment with me.
The acceptance stage comes quickly during this process, but the feeling of having fallen down and coming to terms with that has stayed with me. It’s sort of like ripping off a Band-Aid, where I still avoid ice and slippery surfaces, but being in the act of falling is no longer a frightening, traumatizing experience. I’ve essentially come to terms that this is how my life works now in the freezing winter, and I can only do my best to keep moving. No, I won’t wear my microspikes everywhere I go.
I was reflecting on this self-realization on a day of trail maintenance with some of my fellow Lakes Region Conservation Corps (LRCC) members, as we descended Red Hill via the Teedie Trail. The entire day we had traversed the snowy landscape and walked among the multitude of tree species that comprised its biodiverse forests, but right as we got within a few hundred feet of the end of the trail, we entered a massive patch of Japanese barberry and Asiatic bittersweet. Both of these species (Berberris thunbergi, Celestratus orbiculatus) are notorious throughout America as invasive species that voraciously spread through forests and choke out the native plants, to the point where even the trees get suffocated by their unchecked growth.
Trail days are full of silent reflection as Nick and Micaela climb the ridge towards Mt. Squam.
Preventing the spread of invasive species is a large part of the Squam Lakes Association’s role in conserving the Squam watershed, but the sheer scope of the problem often feels daunting. At first it feels hard to grasp the scope of the issue, and it can be frustrating to struggle for half an hour on removing a single barberry bush. Sometimes I’ve felt like giving up, and that my efforts feel just like a drop in the bucket compared to what needs to be done to save our ecosystems. In the midst of this, I came around to a more positive outlook, and decided that every invasive plant removed is one step in the right direction for the health of our world, and that if I want our forests to stay as marvelous as those on the rest of the Red Hill range, then this is the way to help. This was the same point when I realized I went through the five stages of grieving again.
Ultimately, conservation is about striving towards a goal for improving the natural world and the people that interact with it, even if that means spending backbreaking hours pulling roots the size of my arm. It’s about accepting that the world is in the state it is in, but simultaneously rejecting the idea that it’s how things should be. It’s tough to stick to an idea of how the world should be and to keep working towards it despite the urge to quit, but knowing how much better our forests are without some species gives me the hope to keep going, just like how I can keep getting up after slipping on the ice.
Nick is a half-time member serving with the Squam Lakes Association. You may recognize him from last year’s journals, he served with the Lakes Region Conservation Trust last summer! You can read more about Nick here.