Root and branch
What Japanese knotweed and trail running might teach us about the beliefs that run, or ruin, our lives.
For several years now, signs like this have been appearing in a seemingly random pattern around the main roads and back roads of Ireland.
From an “Invasive Plant Information Notice” by the Irish Government’s Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (emphasis mine):
Japanese knotweed poses a number of threats to farms across Ireland. It grows rapidly and growth rates of up to 40mm a day have been recorded. One tiny particle blowing in the wind or transported on a car tyre is enough to create an infestation.
Japanese knotweed consumes fertiliser and water intended for crops. The species can seriously damage houses, buildings and hard surfaces because it has the ability to grow through concrete and tarmac (See Fig. 2). It cost an estimated £88m to remove Japanese knotweed from the London Olympic Village site in 2012.
And so three things
Awareness of this from those roadside signs, plus
the task of moving a small wild cherry tree from one part of the garden to another a few years back and witnessing up close how deep and strong its roots had gone — it turns out moving a five-foot tree without heavy machinery can sweat up to a gargantuan task, where you might, if you’re like me, end up loudly cursing yourself for the folly of even trying, plus
the supposedly simple task of digging a 10-inch square hole to home a potted plant recently, and seeing how the roots of a nearby ash tree had roamed far and wide just under the sod in search of water and nutrients
have had me thinking a lot about roots.
So the other day, when I went for a run in my nearby park, and turned off the paved path for a 500-meter semi-trail section through the woods, I was struck with a new awareness of the density of the roots I had to navigate with each stride — roots as solid and permanent as rock, like fossilized anacondas on the woodland floor, each one giving me a glimpse into the tiny thrills of challenging navigation that so appeal to trail runners.
In my country, and maybe in yours, when something in an official seat of power has gone badly wrong, somebody somewhere will call for a “root-and-branch review”.
This is shorthand for — to pile analogy on analogy — a 360-degree audit, an investigation that leaves no stone unturned as the root-and-branch-reviewers try to find out exactly what went wrong, and why.
I mention this only because, as I was on the trail, carefully and gleefully navigating the thick roots beneath my feet, stepping this way and that, all the time trying to keep moving forward at sufficient speed to maintain something close to the 8-minute-mile pace that had inserted itself on my consciousness as something important for me to strive for, I was struck in the head fairly forcefully by a branch.
It was, thankfully, a young and fairly pliable branch, so no damage done. But it did wake me up to the fact that I needed to be aware of more than what was beneath my feet.
And then, as these things sometimes go, another analogy presented itself, one that made me think about how we do anything.
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