You know the scene where Frodo and Sam are at the base of
Mount Doom and Frodo can no longer remember the Shire? Well, I’m Frodo, Dee is Sam, and the Shire is
Montana. We’re closing in on the end of
our journey but the final climb is daunting.
Dee played her role well—motivating me by reminding me of the place
where our quest began. There are no
ticks at that elevation and poison ivy is nearly non-existent. It almost sounds too good to be true! Montana truly is a magical place.
This week I’m being sent back to the front lines to combat
the invasives. It sounds like things
have taken a turn for the worst while I was away—seeing how our contact told us
that Sericea is a lost cause. Entire
fields and hills have been overrun by the weed and we’d risk erosion issues if
we were to tamper with it. Instead, we
will focus on Knapweed and Teasel before they reach equally dangerous
proportions.
There is one major difference about spraying this week
though: we’re camping. This made all of
us a little nervous as we have no means to rinse off stray chemical and it is
supposed to storm throughout the week.
The campground they put us in is pretty nice though. There is a shower house and the grounds are
well kept—very few ticks or mosquitoes, buggers that plagued my last camping
experience. I’m currently sitting in our
UTV watching an approaching storm. The
temperature has cooled, the wind is picking up, it feels like rain… this is my
favorite weather.
Well I’m going to go watch the storm and pray my Macguyvered
rainfly holds out. Dan took our truck to
switch it out since it almost died on the way here, but I think I got enough
tape to get the job done beforehand.
Later all!
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