Tree Hugger

I like being outside. I love nature. So, I went to college and studied things like dendrology, limnology, hydrology, biology, meteorology, geology… basically, lots of scientific -ology stuff with some physics and calculus thrown in.

I ended up with a degree in Environmental Science and despite all this extensive collegiate training my years of education have often been brushed aside with a sneer: “Environmentalist.”

Look, I love nature and the environment. But there’s a balance in all things and I try to look at the bigger picture. To do better when I can but acknowledge there is no such thing as a zero carbon footprint.

I’ve still been called a tree hugger. And I have a love-hate relationship with this phrase. Trees are amazing, beautiful, and necessary for life on Earth. And sure, I’ll hug a tree. However, there are much more effective methods to combat deforestation or minimize my personal consumption of wood and paper products.

But now we have come to the point in this story when I must confess that I don’t love all of nature’s bounty.

Poison Ivy.

We are not friends.

As it turns out, despite all of my training, I did not know one basic fact about poison ivy: it is still poisonous when it’s dormant in the winter.

I also didn’t know it could grow up trees as a vine the size of your arm.

And now we have arrived at “murder trees.”

This is a picture from our grove. We are spending our weekends slowly working through it, clearing out dead trees and cutting them up for firewood. This land used to be cattle pasture, and the creek area has never been maintained. Many of the trees have large, parasitic vines growing on them. Others have 4-inch long thorns.

Some have both.

I actually don’t mind the Locust trees, except for when I step on one of their fallen thorns and it pokes a rather large hole in my foot. But this tree pictured has another problem: poison ivy. That tiny vine? Just a small example of the vines found growing up trees all over this grove. Many of which were several inches in diameter. I took great pride in reaching my arms around the trees – hugging them, in a sense – and tearing those vines off them with my bare hands.

In case you haven’t figured it out: those vines are poison ivy. And they are full of urushiol oils (the thing that gives you the nasty rash).

SOOOOOO…. long story short: me + tree hugging = poison ivy rash on my face. Let’s just say a whole lot of not-fun and one steroid shot later, I’m disinclined to hug more trees.

For a while, anyway.