Invasive Species along the Potomac

A coverall left behind

Today the weather in Northern Virginia is cold and blustery, as well it should be on a Saturday in early January. Bright sunshine and bracing temperatures offer a fresh start after a night of too little sleep, a friend’s happy-hour birthday, holiday leftovers, and pours of red wine with leftover cheese and crackers from a friend’s party four states away, followed by multiple episodes of The Good Wife, half of which you sleep through at the expense of eight hours sleep.

Morning promises redemption. You dig out a Merino wool top and bottom base layer; don windproof winter cycling trousers, a winter Pickleball hoodie, and a fleece vest from a winter press trip to Alaska. With a face lathered in sunscreen, you put inserts into a pair of hiking boots, find wool socks and a cap.

You’re late, but you join volunteers removing invasive species in a marsh along the Potomac. It’s twenty-nine degrees, and steady breezes make it frigid.

The man you talked to a year or so ago is standing in the middle of a thorny thicket, discussing the species he is cutting out. Two other volunteers grasp loppers, listening in anticipation of their own prey. You apologize for being late, introduce yourself, give your credentials, and start looking for Japanese honeysuckle. Flexibility and balance along with time on the yoga mat all come into play as you pull your leg over fallen logs and step into layers of frozen leaves and debris on uneven terrain. An hour into the endeavor you silently praise the National Park Service for keeping the toilets open twelve months a year, because taking a dump in a leafless forest along the Potomac, a stone’s throw from D.C., is not high on your list of objectives for the new year.

You last about ninety minutes in the cold, because despite past winter mountaineering, today you really needed a wind-breaking layer. Bidding the group goodbye, you reminisce about the insulated winter coverall you left behind at your Central Park gardening job twenty-five years ago. In that thing you could stand around chopping sidewalk-ice in temperatures of three and four degrees for hours.

Now the coverall is likely languishing in some landfill.

Mistakes. You make them.

The good news? You can start over anytime.