On Thursday, Suzanne and I walked through the construction area where they are building the fence through the Mesas. Walking with her gives me quite an appreciation for nature and the environment. The way she gets excited about certain types of plants and native bushes and called a rare bird "baby". One of the main things I learned was the deep roots that the native plants to the region have, both symbollically and literally. Most have been there for centuries and because they don't need much water, their root system is very extensive. This is also why it will cause so much erosion to uproot them. They are the glue that holds the hillsides intact. We found a root that looked bigger than most tree roots that i've seen and yet it came from a bush. "Trees are top heavy, the native bushes are bottom heavy." We walked among heavy machinery, bull dozers and others. We had a few run-ins with Border Agents and the national guard and they really didn't want us there but allowed us to take certain routes in order to get up to the heart of the grading. "You need to leave now" said one of the Border Agents. "Can I take my root?" said Suzanne refering to an 8-10 foot root that we found that she wanted to take along to show how something that took decades to grow was torn up in minutes.

Native plants I learned about:

Mojave Yucca

Baja Bird Bush.

Lemonade Berry bush.

Night Shade

To see the video go to youtube.com and type in "watman feb" in the search. All four videos from the trip will come up.