In the early springtime, before I head up north for the summer, my early morning walk takes me down an asphalt bicycle trail alongside a railroad track. It is not the most inspiring scenery, but it is amazing what you can see if you keep your eyes open. I especially like early morning (I begin walking 20-30 minutes before sunrise) because it is still possible to connect with some of the wildlife that is winding down its nocturnal activities.
As an example, last week (the first week in May), I walked within 15 feet of three deer that barely bothered to note my presence. A day later, a coyote ran across the path about 75 feet in front of me. The next day, I saw a small ball of brown fur in the grass and didn’t know what it was until I spied the thin tail that gave it away as a muskrat. A half hour later, upon my return, it was still there munching grass. I walked to within three feet of it, and after a few seconds it decided it didn’t like my company that much and waddled off. Every day, I walk past two families of geese, whose young hatched less than a week ago. It’s amazing how quickly they grow! Again, I walk within an arm’s length of the geese. Mama and papa turn and hiss at me while the goslings move away as fast as their little legs will carry them (not very fast!)
What has interested me the most, however, is a much more slow-moving drama, literally moving at the pace of watching grass grow. In this case, however, it is a titanic struggle between shoots of small sandbar willow shrubs (Fig. 1) and the asphalt pavement of the bike path. Earlier in the spring, I noticed bulges in the asphalt, which over a number of days began to split (Fig. 2). One bulge, in particular, took a couple weeks to split, and toward the end of that time, I spied a tiny green speck in one of the cracks (Fig. 3). Over a few more days, the green speck turned into some small leaves. Some neighboring bulges that had split during the previous summer now have dense scatterings of willow shoots reaching for the sun (Fig. 4).
I am always amazed at how a tender flexible shoot of a plant can penetrate or displace a thick crust of asphalt or, sometimes, even concrete. Such force is not confined to the shoots of woody trees. In his wonderful book, “Entangled Life”, Merlin Sheldrake discusses the incredible properties of root systems (mycelia) of fungi and mushrooms. Even these delicate life forms are capable of exerting unbelievable force as they grow. According to Sheldrake, when a stinkhorn mushroom penetrates an asphalt road, it exerts enough force to lift 130 kilograms (286 pounds)!
I often wonder what would happen if some natural or manmade disaster wiped out the entire human race. How long would it take for plants, from fungi to grasses to trees, to obliterate the roads that now crisscross every continent except Antarctica? If new intelligent life forms arose 100 million years after the disaster, what traces of our present civilization would remain for them to puzzle over?
