Sashaying Around West Texas Sky Islands

Rants about Davis Mountains fungi, Ponderosa Pine Death from drought, torrential Texas rains, West Texas alcoholics, Mandevilla hypoleuca, Echeveria strictiflora, Growing Madrones, American Smoke Trees in Austin, Madrones in San Antonio, Dystopia and more....

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to another episode of the Crime Pace. A body
doesn't podcasts. I'm in West Texas, just got here a
couple days ago, got here like three in the morning. Boy,
I had a I had a long spur when I
wasn't getting any sleep for like a whole weekend. I
did two two hour presentations on long killing last Saturday
in Austin, and then killed the lawn and planted a

(00:23):
whole bunch of shit in the ground in between that
and just went to I just went to heart, man,
you know. And uh, and then I slept. We were
staying up late watching Western dramas on Friday night. That's
why I didn't get any sleep. I don't know why
the fuck I did. I don't know why I did that.
I don't know why I did that. I need I

(00:43):
needed to rest, you know, going too hard. Got a
bunch of videos to edit and a whole bunch of shit,
and then we're going to Costa Rica for this this
tour thing on the eighth, which should be fun, should
be nice to see the fun guy that are going
off in the neotropical cloud force at nine thousand feet.

(01:06):
And then I'm trying to do a fungal survey of
the Davis Mountains tomorrow, so we'll see how that goes.
But christ Man West, Texas has gotten a whole bunch
of rain. I assume all that moisture is coming up
from the Pacific from you know, south southwest, like off
the coast of Sinaloa, but it could be coming from
the Gulf too. Texas in general has just gotten dumped on.

(01:28):
So it's very green right now. It's a very good
time for plants. The presentations I gave in Austin, it
was good. It was really nice. One was outside and
I showed up. I thought it was going to be
like a projector thing and they didn't have a projector.
It was near the Elizabeth Nay Museum, and like old Austin,
you know, like a nice, walkable neighborhood, not the car

(01:50):
slum that most of Austin is, where you have to
drive everywhere, even if it's even if you could walk there.
Some neighborhoods in Austin, even if you could walk there,
you're still trapped in a fucking car, like it's too dangerous.
There's no sidewalks or there's a freeway in between. It's
like a freeway in between you and the grocery store.

(02:10):
Those drives, Now you got to drive a mile and
a half down, do a U turn, come back way
to three fucking lights in between. And you know, cars
make people miserable. We didn't, we didn't evolve to spend
you know, five hours a day in them anyway. But
so it was an old It was like in this
old part of Austin, kind of near where my friend

(02:30):
Jim Mosseth lives. Professor emeritus emeritus emeritus. How the fuck
you're supposed to pronounce I should have heard people pronounce
that before me. It just means he's a retired professor
at u T Austin, retired plant physiologist. But you know
he moved there like forty years ago, before housing prices

(02:54):
became totally inaccessible. Anyway. So the first, the first presentation
I gave, I showed up and it was just outside.
It was like they set up two tables for us
to sell our merch, you know, thorn scrub benefit t shirts.
And then all the shit I screenprint in my garage.
And then James Peace was selling plants, you know, half
the shit seeds I gave him, seeds I collect for

(03:18):
a little nursery, and then and then it was just
it was just basically speaking, it was just sitting on
a limestone block speaking to fifty people in chairs outside.
It was nice, man, It was actually ended up being nice.
So I showed up. They didn't have a projector. I
was like, all right, cool, just fucking wing it and
talk my talk, and I had my little laptop there
just in case, you know, to kind of give it

(03:41):
some structure, so it's not it's not like this podcast
where it's just disjointed rambling. But it was. It was
really great, man, Like a bunch of people were stoked
on it, and you know, I just I go through
the whole thing. Why lawns are pointless even in areas
where it rains a lot. You get you know, of
course everyone knows about how it's stupid the water, this
thing that if you're in a very you know, drought

(04:04):
prone region like Phoenix, but they're also shitty on the
East coast because the roots don't go very deep. I
get into the route to shoot ratio. Why the roots
don't go deep if you're keeping you know, a law
perpetually bond's eye, because any grass species wants to grow
and flower and a lot of people don't even know
grass produces flowers, which is wild to me. But that's
you know, that's I mean, I think people they come

(04:27):
to a presentation I give probably no grass flowers. But
you know, those aren't the people I'm trying to reach.
I'm trying to reach people who are like total, totally
new to this. So and then I get into just
horticultural atrocities and the mind what I call the minecraft landscaping,
like the video game landscaping of even uniform lines with
even spacing and bunching colors together, all that shit that

(04:47):
you see at like fancy botanic gardens a nice place
to get kicked out of. You know, there saw a
lot of that when I was at Atlanta Botanical Garden.
It's crazy because Atlanta Botanic Gardens as a rep mutation
because of this guy Ron Dieederman that worked there that
you know, we're having a whole bunch of rare plants.
Wild shit. They got an Amberella specimen, you know, the

(05:09):
most the basic, most extant that is still in existence,
flowering plant from New Caledonia, you know, really cool fucking specimen.
They've got a whole bunch of new Caledonian conifers. They've
got some cool stuff. But then you know they've also
do this thing that I've noticed botanic gardens do in Chicago.

(05:29):
Garfield Park up Botanic Garden did this for a while
where they're like, I think they they feel like the
plants aren't enough, or the administrators do whoever's in charge
of there. They feel like the plants aren't enough, and
they're not like focused on science. They're not showing people
cool shit. Look at this thing. This is kind of
this needum is intermediate between a conifer and an angiosperm.
Or here's like a vanilla plant. That's pretty basic, you know,

(05:52):
that kind of stuff. So they're like, well, what do
we do to attract we need We need to just
we need to get membership up. You need to get
visitorship up. What do we do? Let's have a glass
sculpture or a sound installation. Doesn't that sound great? And
that's my white lady voice too. I had someone comment
thing that that that was like a gay voice making
fun of the gaze. The fuck. Where the fuck have

(06:13):
you been? You haven't been listening to the fucking podcast
for all right? I've been I've been hanging out with
the gays for the last thirty years of my life.
Go fuck yourself anyway, So yeah, so I don't know
it was that's yeah, that's my rich white levoice. But anyway,
I don't know. I don't know why botanic gardens do that,
because it's it's it's you know, I just kind of
exemplifies how disconnected we are to begin with, right, But

(06:35):
you see a lot of that shit. It's some of
these botanic gardens. These I'm gonna plant everything in the line.
I'm gonna group the colors together. Doesn't it look nice? Oh,
I'm a plant. I'm playing with I'm getting creative now,
I'm planting all these colors here in this color is here,
and I the spacing's a little closer, it's a little
tighter on this side. And it just you don't need
to do that shit. You know, you put in cool stuff.

(06:56):
You know you know something about plants or plant ecology,
you'll know what the plant you know. And then you
got to have the informational signs. It's really important, and
everything's ship's got to be labeled. You got to have
families on there. That's how people learn plant. I the
you learn plant identification by going to a botanic garden,
seeing a living specimen of some shit that you like,

(07:18):
and then learning what fan being able to see what
species it is and see what family it's in more importantly,
and then if you see enough of that, you start
to connect the dots. So these are the traits that
place something in a family, which is you know, most
likely flower structure, or it can be a certain kind
of leaf venation. You know, in the case of Erythroxylum,

(07:39):
the coca plant, they I think they all have those
weird three veins, a center vein and then two kind
of bow shaped parallel veins on either side, right, or
you know, there's we could go down the list. So anyway,
so I start talking about this kind of like, you know,
there's one to do the botanic gardens, like the way

(08:01):
you see Berkeley does it, where it's like recreating a
cology and it's more like a museum showing people really
cool plants. Then there's a whole other way where it's
it's just you know, design emphasis ondesigned, which is that
doesn't fucking mean and it's pointless, it's stupid, and don't
fucking this isn't better homes and guards the better homes
and gardens, botanic garden, you know, the East Coast shit,

(08:23):
the rich luxury housewife shit. You know, trophy wife needs
something to do in her free time. She maybe she'll
fucking volunteer at an East Coast botanic garden, right doesn't.
Another way it works like in a wealthy suburb. So anyway,
so I go into that, and I've got some really
hideous pictures of some of this shit that I'm talking about,

(08:44):
the office park, landscaping, that stuff. And then I get
into because I'm not a landscaper, I don't give a fuck.
I don't care about any of that. I want to
I want to bring nature home to steal a quote
from Doug Tallamy, who I'm still amazed came on this
podcast once. Because we have very different styles. He's a
genteel offense to him. You know, that's a time and
it's a time and a place for that. We're very different. Anyway,

(09:08):
I take a swig of my green th forty, so
I get into that, and then and then start showing people,
you know, it could be it's a region specific presentation.
Starts showing people what they could plant, like the cool
natives that grow in their region that no one knows
exists and no one's planting very few people know exist, right,
And that's how you start. That's used that to cultivate

(09:30):
a native plant movement. And what does that mean. It
means just reconnecting people to the land that they live on.
It's not just landscaping. Landscaping is for the rich. Gardening
and landscaping, it's for now. This is something much more
than it is recreating habitat. This is learning about the
land that you live on. God, it just it's you know,

(09:51):
I don't know, it's h it's weird. It's a it's
a blending of these two worlds. I feel like sometimes
with this ship, you got like the better homes and gardens,
you know, uh genteel, the you know, for the rich
version of just who like can be into natives, but
not they're mostly just into landscaping and design. Got that shit,

(10:12):
which I don't really care about. I think it's cool
when you see like a native plant garden that's been
done nice like Michael Eeson does, that's awesome. But uh,
and then it's a blend of like the people that
are just in the native plants, those are the people
I want to reach. But I mean, you know, you
can do both, right, I'd rather like the people that
are into the landscaping, garden design, all that stuff, you know,

(10:34):
and charging seventy thousand dollars for an install or something.
I'd rather they use mostly natives than not. And I'd
rather they have an awareness of natives and not. But
that's not my that's not the target audience I'm looking for.
Like the people that don't have a lot of money,
that maybe want to kill their law, that want to
do this on the cheap, but they just they want
to connect to the land. That's the main thing they want.

(10:54):
They don't want so much a nice design and installation
they want. They want it's something that that mimics the
land around It's going to teach them about the land
they live on, you know. And that's the thing. You
turn your yard and do a fucking laboratory, elaborate an
ecological laboratory to learn about the natives around you. You know,
maybe you plant some fucking food plants or some non

(11:16):
native but non invasive shit that you happen to like
that you want to learn about too, whatever you know.
So anyways, but it was good. It was a good
it was a good day. I mean, I was absolutely
fucking wiped out, and I have trouble sleeping too, Like
I can't turn myself off. I drink a shit ton
of coffee and then I switched to the green tea
later on, and then I'm just going and I've got

(11:37):
this consistent, like dopamine drip from all the stuff I'm
into and trying to do, whether it's plants or art
or whatever the fuck. And then I just I can't
turn it off, and I need to figure out a
way to turn that off. Don't send me suggestions. I'm
not looking for that. I'm just saying it's it's hard
for me to to turn it off, you know. And
maybe it is escape a little bit too from the

(11:59):
fucking brutal reality. But we did have some wins lately though,
at least in Texas well and nationally too. That talking thumb,
the you know, Mike Lee, the senator from Utah that
was pushing all the sell off of public land and
probably doing it because he was getting paid. I guess

(12:20):
he rescinded that whole scheme. For now. They're gonna try again.
They've been trying this shit since the eighties. It's weird
because I'm you know, I think the reason it was
saved wasn't because of a bunch of you know, us
lefty whiners. It was it was because he didn't listen.
It was the hunting community. And this was one thing

(12:41):
that was good that I could see left and right
coming together on. And if they could do it for this,
why can't they do it on other things like healthcare
and you know, stealing the government back from corporations that
own it. You know, But that's that's probably too much
to hope for. In today's America populations. Education has been
defunded for forty years, you know, and it's a growing movement,

(13:03):
so people are a lot dumber than they probably used
to be and more polarized too. That's what the one
that's the one great tool of the oligarchs have social media,
getting people. You know, there was Kyle Ibarger got featured
in the New York Times. My friend Kyle Native Habitat
Project got featured in New York Times. And I was
looking through the comments, which was already you know, most

(13:24):
of them were praising it was great. But then of
course there's like the token Caucasian woman. Yeah, well what
about bipoic Indigenous It's like, what about them? Like Kyle's
talks about indigenous burning methods all the time, Like why
do you have to take it there? Like you're just
you're a pawn. You're literally acting like a pawn of

(13:44):
the oligarchy, just spewing divisive shit out there, and of
course like you're it's it's it's a fucking Caucasian woman lecturing,
Like the exact reason I left the Bay Area, like
I was sick of hearing Caucasian people, especially lecture others
about racism. Like just fucking the overcompensation factor, the performative factor.

(14:07):
Just take it easy. You don't need to do this.
You really don't like this isn't this it's not gonna
it's not going to show that you're a good person.
So just take it easy. You're not educating. Did you
just learn that the world is fucked up? Like why
do you feel the need to do this? You just
did you just do this? I mean I read people's
history of the United States when I was fifteen. You
just you just discovered you know, the reality, the harsh

(14:29):
reality the history here or what like take it easy, man.
This is not the way to change the world, you know.
And I figure what she said was a comment that
I was like, yeah, you're changing the world via the
comments sectually, good job, you know, divisive trolling comments in
the commentation anyway. But so the thing with the public

(14:51):
lancell Left though, that was that was heartening to read.
Was watching Yeah, I was watching Left there right, watching
like all these I think, what was it like meat
eater podcast some other guy. People were pissed. Man. People
realized that this is and there were only a couple
boot lick or comments too where it's will the federal
goobibidudes too, bitch? No, no, no, this isn't like an

(15:12):
a Reaganist you know, anti big government thing. Don't don't
phrase it like that. The federal government doesn't own it,
they manage it. You own it. The public owns it.
And of course a lot of people in Texas and
even on the East Coast have no idea. Look at
a public lands map of North America and look, once
you hit New Mexico, from New Mexico west and north,

(15:33):
there's a shit ton of public land. It's incredible. Nevada
has the most. And boy did I spend time in Nevada,
wonderful moments of my life. Weeks of my life in Nevada,
living out of the back of my truck, doing botany,
scamming time off from the railroad. When I went out
for shoulder surgery after dislocating my shoulder, that was a
that was a guys, and I got, like, you know,

(15:55):
four months off. Well, they wouldn't let me back for
a while. They were they were up. Actually, just caught
a big settlement for fucking people like that. The railroad
did for uh, you know, not for fucking with people
when they go out for like a surgery or some
sort of disability thing and then trying to disqualify them
from service. What a horrible company. Anyway, Well, the thing is,

(16:18):
if they fire someone, then they can hire due to
the contract agreements, they can hire a new hire brakeman,
you know, at eighty percent of what what someone who's
been there five or ten years would make. So I
think that's why they want to do it. Anyway, But
I spent a lot of time in event. I've spent
a lot of time in Arizona. I've spent a lot,
a shit, a ton of time in New Mexico. This
is like twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen, eighteen nineteen, and twenty

(16:43):
twenty in all these places. A lot of time there,
like weeks, like just just moving around slowly looking for
plants in the mountains and just spending time. That mountaintop
looks good, Let's go there, that hill looks cool, Let's
go there. Look at this exposure of volcanic tough. Let's
go over there. And you can go to all these
places and there's no one there, and there's a bunch

(17:04):
of wonderful plant species, and they're all different variations on
a theme. Different species of Vissilia or ariagonum, different dyc's,
different species of in Cilia or in Celiopsis gypsum endemics.
Some of the Aregemenies, you know, our Gemeny California Californica
bear poppy gypsum endemic grows on crazy soil outside of

(17:31):
outside of Vegas on gyps some exposures outside of Vegas,
you know, the different speed Yucca jaegaryana, the dwarf Joshua
tree grown in southwest Utah. And the idea that somehow
this would be sold off. First off, he was doing
it under the auspices of affordable housing. There's more than
enough housing. It's just owned by investors. You're in. You're

(17:54):
not trying to create affordable housing. There's no money in
affordable housing. You're trying to create luxury housing because you're
a pig. So that right there. And then of course,
if he's getting love, I'm sure he's getting lobbied hard.
I mean the whole you know, it's all these dudes
are so owned and bought already. It was crazy. But anyway,
it was nice to see a grassroots effort on both

(18:14):
the left and the right that come together and do this.
And of course, you know, you get down to it,
I'm sure there'd be some shitty things people on the
right could say, like, oh, yeah, these these laborers just
want to go out there and just feel good about themselves.
They just want to hike. They just want to what
is act? Just want to You just want to feel
good about yourself. I heard someone I used, this guy
who had one foot in the grave and mentally obese man,

(18:35):
you know, looked miserable in all other respects. One of
the only people I worked with on a railroad who
tried to talk to me about religion once and I
had to tell him. I had to fucking interrupt and
be like, look, man, stop, I'm trapped in this locomotive
cab with you, and everyone knows you just don't talk
about politics or religion on the road. I need you
to stop. It's like sixty five. I wonder if he's
still alive. Probably not. Didn't look like he would be.

(18:56):
Didn't look very healthy anyway, but he was. He went
off to me. He went off on a rant about
that to me once. He's like, oh, these you know,
these people from down south want to come up here
to northern California and you know, spend two weeks in
a place that we have to live, and shit the
fuck up. They have fucking arguments. They're so elitist and
and shitty, you know, so they can feel good about

(19:19):
themselves by going out on a you. Yeah, you should
do that too, buddy. Somebody ought to dose you, you know,
straight bag over the head, dose you ether chloroform your ass.
Drag you out to a fucking mount in the Klamath Wilderness,
Give you a map, show you how to get home,
make your walk thirty miles, you fucking pig. I get
a little spicy, but uh, a connection to land that

(19:44):
we all have as humans. I don't know how you.
I don't know how you don't want that, you know, well,
I do you. The culture you grew up in, doctor
indoctrinates you to conquer and control it. But you know
it's bad shit. It's just cultural indoctrination anyway. So that
was glad to see that rescinded for now, but I'm
sure they're going to come back at it at some point,
you know. At first he tried to break it down,

(20:06):
Mike leaded and say that we're only going to sell
land within five miles of a of a population center.
But that's you know, you give them an inch, You
give them an inch, and they're they're going to take
a mile. Four years later, I was surprised they put
that into a budget built too, but it failed. So
that was great to see. And hopefully it'll you know,
if they try it again, and they certainly will, it'll

(20:28):
it'll fail again. Not one acre, your fucking pigs. And
then lastly, I was surprised this happened, you know, because
I don't smoke weed. I don't I have no personal
interest in this. I think weed can make people complete
idiots too. You do it every day, you're forgetful, you
get paranoid. A lot of you know, a lot of
the quack science people on the permaculture hashtag not all

(20:53):
permaculture lists, A lot of the quack science people in
the permaculture front that are some wacky shit. You could
tell they're just I wonder how much of that is
due to the constant smoking of of cannabis. But it's
a lot more pleasant to be around people like that. Well,
I shouldn't say people like that. It's a lot more
pleasant to be around, you know, daily cannabis users or

(21:17):
someone who's just stoned than someone who's an alcoholic, like
the talent. And also it's better for you obviously, like
the alcohol is fucking brutal, you know, for true alcoholics,
the alcohol is just a symptom of a much deeper
spiritual sickness. Almostly these nice you know, a need for validation,
lack of humility, uh you know, uh, lack of humility,

(21:41):
trying to fill the hole where like true self love
would be. You know, ego. Ego isn't self love, right,
I should do a do it, I should do like
a fucking emotional emotional coaching podcast sometime maybe I'll do that.
Just kidding. But ego is not true self love, right.

(22:04):
Ego is just compensating. It's fake, it's phony, it's it's
having to compare yourself to others. All this shit, all
the bitterness, all this stuff you see in drunks like
that comes out six months after they walk in the
rooms and start getting sober. Right, all that shit, right,
Alcoholics is a symptom of that. But it also kind
of allows it too. It allows it to get that bad.

(22:25):
It allows the spiritual sickness to get that bad. And
so you you know, people walk in they're like, I
just think I got a drinking problem, and then later
on they learn a lot more about themselves and they realize, wow,
I was fucked up, Like I was a toxic motherfucker
ten years ago. I'm still kind of an asshole, much
less so than I was. But you know, the the drinking.
That's why when you just quit drinking and you're not

(22:46):
actually dealing with your shit, going to therapy, taking psychedelics
in a fucking you know, therapeutic setting, or with the
just with the intent of looking in at yourself and
having a bad trip and dealing with all your bullshit.
All that's self honesty. When you just quit drinking, It's
why they call it white knuckling. It You just fucking
grasping a goddamn steering wheel trying to stay on the road.

Speaker 2 (23:08):
You know.

Speaker 1 (23:08):
Oh fuck, I just hope I don't go off the
shoulder and down the cliffs. Spirally. You just quit drinking
without dealing with your shit, you're gonna you're gonna go
back to fucking boozing and being an asshole, and you're
not gonna be a better person. There's no self betterment
there anyway. I don't have any experience as a pothead,
so I can't really say it, but uh what it's

(23:29):
what what you know? Cannabis, which is more of like
a psychological addiction, is like But I will say it's
much more pleasant to be around, to be around people
that just smoke a lot of weed. You can still
piss your life away, you can still be lazy and
not get things done, you can still be a space
cadet most of the time. It gumes up the gears
of the mind, et cetera. But you're not gonna be

(23:50):
a drunk, and you're not You're probably gonna have a
little bit longer a lifespan. So it was disheartening to
see Ku Kluuk's Colonel Sanders, that is Lieutenant Governor Dan
Patrick whose real name is Dan Goeb, who used to
be I didn't know he had an extensive career is
a right wing talk radio host. Did you know that?
You can see it in his jowls. But anyway, he

(24:14):
was pushing this this anti THHC bill where I guess
there's small amounts of THHC were legalized through a federal
I'm probably gonna fuck this up, but small amounts of
THHC were legalized through a federal farm bill. Yeah, that
was it, Okay. The federal farm bill that legalized HAMP
and by extension, HEMP drived THHC, specifically delta nine THHC

(24:35):
at a concentration of point three percent or less on
a dry weight basis is the Agriculture Improvement Act of
twenty eighteen, also known as the twenty eighteen Farm Bill.
So because of this, it's why you can get like
these five milligram THC phizzy drinks at the fucking bakery
here and Alpine or they got gummies whatever, and five
milligrams if I have one of those, that'll set my

(24:57):
ass back. I cracked one open last night. I could
drink half of it because I don't really like being high,
but it got me to relax and actually turn off
my brain for a minute, and it was nice. So
and I'm grateful to have that. And I know so
many drunks too that have said I quit drinking so

(25:17):
much because I can smoke pot or I can eat
a gummy or something whatever. So it's not necessarily my
cup of tea, but it's much and it's much safer
to be around that than people that are getting DUIs
and driving hammered and shit, you drive, you drive behind
someone who's stoned. Right still, they might wait a little
bit longer at the light, they might go a little

(25:38):
bit slower, they might do weird shit, but they're not
gonna be ripping around corners and swerving, and you know,
it's just it's much better for society. And there's some
alcoholics that are never going to walk in those doors
of AA. They're never gonna do it. Maybe they will
five ten years down the line, whatever, but the next
best thing, but they know they got to quit drinking
to the next best thing they can do is cannabis.

(26:00):
But anyway, dan Patrick had this real heart on for
all this stuff, and he was framing it this is
this uh oh, we're protecting the children thing, and nobody
bought it. It was kind of funny, man, no one
bought it. People again, left and right came together and
then I don't know what happened if someone paid the
governor of Texas Abbott, who's you know, mostly a complete

(26:22):
asshole on all other fronts, but he vetoed it last minute,
which was great to see. It was you know, it's like, oh,
this is well, that kind of puts the nail in
the coffin. If this failed, maybe it's you know, one
step closer towards uh, you know, if Texas is gonna
has the potential of legalizing this, maybe we're one step

(26:44):
closer to making it more accessible to people, and especially
all the you know, veterans or people who get PTSD
or have other valid health issues where they needed So
I was grateful to see that. I was surprised I
had given up. I was like, this fucking backwards ass
state they're going to you know this it's already over.
But I think what it was. I think it was, Yeah,

(27:05):
mostly just the culture war issue. I think that's why
Dan Patrick had such a heart on for it. But uh,
he really does. He looks like a meaner Colonel Sanders,
because you know, Colonel Sanders is a branding logo. He
doesn't look mean. He looks like he's kind of jolly
and she he's probably still a you know, plantation owner
and a pig, but but he's kind of jolly. Dan

(27:26):
Patrick doesn't ever look jolly. He looks like he's fucking
miserable and dying inside. Anyway. So after that, I went
to uh, this couple's land in Kendall County or or
was it Benderic anyway, right on the border of Kendall
and Bendera County, like like northwest of San Antonio, and uh,

(27:46):
there were I found her. I had found her barium specimens,
herbarium records of called tinas Abba vedas the American smoke tree,
which of course I've been you know, fixating on quite
a bit for the last few months because it's it's
so rare and it's not grown and it's not grown
enough it should be. It's a fucking beautiful tree. It's
got like glaucous blue leaves. They smell really good. Supposedly

(28:11):
it's got a little bit of You Russia All in it,
or or at least the non native one does. I
don't know if the native one does too, but I
would assume so, because you know, third of the plants.
It's a very common it's a very common phyto chemical.
It's a very common compound in that family, in anacardiac,
and I'm sure it's in many of the plants. I mean,

(28:34):
I know it's in like a third of the plants
to varying degrees. You know, it's probably for It's obviously
sticks around evolutionarily because it's got anti fungal benefits or
anti herbivore benefits. I think it's anti fungal. I might
be wrong on that. I don't know. I haven't looked
into it, but I think You Russia All protects maybe

(28:55):
helps protect new growth against damping off or rotting. I
don't know what effects it has on insects, but either way,
it's you know, the fact that it causes contact dermatitis
and people is clearly just a bipride. It's clearly not
the evolutionary benefit. It's not the adaptive benefit of the
compound and the plant just happens, just just coincidence. But anyway,

(29:18):
I don't know why this species is so rare. It grows,
you know, it's supposedly someone wrote me saying it grows
near above a dam in Missouri. It grows on a
limestone escarpment above a dam in Branston, Missouri. Was that
right table rock dam? I think? But it likes thin,
soiled areas. And when we finally encountered a single specimen
later that day growing on a one lane, beat up

(29:40):
dirt road, totally vacant on that edge of the balcone's escarpment,
I saw why it was growing on a south facing
road cut on basically pure limestone, with all the typical
cast of species christic Tinia mexicana, Dammianita, which doesn't also
doesn't get plant enough measure. If you went to a
fucking depress strip mall in Austin or San Antonio and

(30:02):
you saw damniannito, you saw chris Actinia mexicana with those
fragrant leaves and the little yellow you know a plant
that you know has relationships with a host of other organisms,
insects and fungi and probably you know, root bacteria, non
nitrogen fixing. But there's plenty of microbes in the soil.

(30:23):
We're just starting to understand. And you know, it's it's
a again, it's a piece to this machine. I always
put it like that. It's a piece of this living machine.
Imagine if you saw that on like a Median parking
strip in the strip mall. The strip mall is still there,
The retail economy is still there. The increasingly dumber American
populist is still there. The increasingly more unhappy and miserable

(30:46):
populace that doesn't have healthcare or education and isn't getting
you know, fair wages, is still there. But you've got
at least a piece to the living machine. And I'm
not being satirical. You know, the instructions for living are
in in nature. They're in I don't even like that
word nature is, you know, but that shit's important. You

(31:09):
think it doesn't matter, You think all that background, You
think it's just decoor. You think it doesn't affect you.
You're wrong. You know it subconsciously affects you. You live
in an ugly, fucking, miserable place. It's disconnected, it's it's
going to affect you, right, Why do you think Airbnb's
feel so depressing? All that gray, the plastic flowers, you know,

(31:31):
the uh the pier one imports decoor. I stayed in
an Airbnb and uh, where was it? I think it
was in Las Cruses. This lady went all out. She
had a free to callo obsession made for a nice house,
felt very homey, felt very cute. I liked it. You know.
The coffee was really kind of lacking, but that's okay.

(31:52):
It was in beautiful LUs Last Cruses. A in a
bad town, you get a nice little you know, you
move into a nice little Hispanic neighborhood and crusaders in
a little little house. You know, everyone's pretty chill. Maybe
there's a lot of barking dogs outside, but otherwise that's
my kind of neighborhood. Anyway. Fucking burritos are expensive, though,

(32:16):
I don't know what's up with that. We went through
a takoia and it was lacking, it was lacking, and
it was expensive. But that's inflation. What the fuck? That's
America in the It's America in this day and age.
You know, someone told me my friend Priya has moved
back to Toronto. She says that she's you know, I
get Toronto of burritos like twenty bucks. The fuck? Why

(32:37):
is Toronto so expensive? It's Toronto. It's miserable, no offense.
I went through Toronto once in two thousand and six.
I was on a freight train stopped there for a day.
That was enough for me. But then we spent a
day or two in the train yard in Capriola, Ontario,
picking wild blueberries, and we went to a museum and
learned about the Sudbury Crater. Nice time I should go

(32:58):
back to Sudbury. Would they let me into Canada? And
I'm getting fucking lost here. The point is, we were
looking at Katinas Abba Vedas, we were looking at American
smoke trees. This guy hit me up via email, shut
out the pole and said, I got some property here.
You want to come look at it? I said, fuck yeah.
I never pass up a chance to look at private
property in Texas. We went out there, surveyed. I immediately

(33:18):
got a stiffy for all the wonderful limestone endemics that
I was seeing madrones on his property. Madrones growing forty
minutes away from San Antonio, Texas, Madrones. But again on
this thin soiled limestone. Why is nobody studying the importance
of soil fungi and soil microbes on thin soiled limestone.

(33:40):
The lawn that I killed in round Rock had eight
inches of soil. When I was digging holes, and I
could dig a quick fucking hole with a sharpshooter, it
takes me twenty seconds. And planting all these plants in
I would dig in con Kong, I'd hit that, you know,
the shovel hits what feels like concrete. And I'm like,
why the fuck is there a building phone in the

(34:00):
middle of the yard. And then I realized it's not
the building foundation, that's the limestone. The limestone is right
up at the service. When they built this neighborhood. I
don't know if they had to import soil or what,
because this is I don't think this is the native soil.
It looks like black land prairie soil, and the limestone
is right there. But also all the plants on plant
that are going to be happy. It's a pig and shit.
And I did plant Damia nita in that yard, and

(34:22):
I did plant Vernonia lindheim arai and Garia, Lindheim Ray
and all these cool Texas natives. You know, those are
the pieces that formed there what make Central Texas central Texas.
And it's the same stuff I was seeing on this
property that we got invited to go look at, and
it was really fucking wonderful. Man, it was great to
go up. We went up on these hills, you know,

(34:44):
these mazes the way limestone erodes, it looks like these
curvy bendy maces, you know, or the way it weathers rather.
And then it's got a thin soil, a thin soil covering,
and there's Qurcus lacy i and Corcus buckley eye. There's
another oaks species I haven't id'd yet. There was a
bunch of great stuff there, and you know, it was

(35:06):
raining on us, but it was fucking still really cool
to see. And then I get up to the top,
and you get up to the top and there's a
kind of serious rich in baky eye and the lace cactus.
I guess it works the way the spines are stappered
around this stem this hedgehog. Heckt the stem they kind

(35:27):
of look like lace, sure, all right, not so spiny,
just forming more of a net and then there was
Cora phantas salkata up there too. Looks like a little
golf ball with spines growing on thin soiled limestone. The
nostoc was happy. The cyanobacterial film just a photosynthetic bacteria
that makes this greens, not like film. I'm always talking

(35:47):
about it in videos. That was really wonderful to see,
really cool plant community. We saw sylphium. What sylphium was that?
I think it was Sylphium ragula, but that's common around
Austin again, very sandpaper like leaves called scabbard scabbard leaves,
and it's growing in a really hot, dry place. It's
like a hot dry tolerance sylphium. I had James with

(36:09):
me too, so he got stoked on that. He's like,
I want to get sea to that. That's a you know,
heat tolerant sylphium. All these underappreciated plants that, you know,
the native plant movement in Texas is kind of just
getting going. It's just getting going last five ten years.
I mean, there's people who've been into this for forty years,
but it's only really lately it seems like it started

(36:30):
really especially taking off, and thank god, you know, stop
planting the crape myrtles. People still get so defensive about
the crpe mertles. They love their crape myrtles here. I
don't get it. They're so fucking gaudy and tacky, man,
But they're not Nandina domestica, which is, you know, crpmurtles
at least have a hard time being invasive, especially on

(36:51):
thin soil limestone. They need more water than that. And
they all look great now too, because or they look healthy.
Not great to me. Great would be you know, chopped down,
but all the crapeburdles and all of a sudden look
good now because they've been getting like we've got like
eighteen inches of rain there in the last since January.
So I'm kind of like fucking because I mean, they

(37:14):
don't they're not. They don't do well, especially like in
San Diego, a lot of places out west, unless they're
on irrigation. They don't like hot, dry summers from a
place to gets forty sixty inches rain. But anyway, Nandina
domestica is the bad one. That's the one that's that's invading.
It's just the bottom of the barrel. Basic bitch, home depot,
garden center, garbage you know, it's like when you don't

(37:35):
know what the plant, you're like a landlord. You're like
a slum lord. You're rent in your place off for
too much money. And you got to do the landscape,
you know, with the plant. You hire a fucking shit
bag landscape where he doesn't carry either. You just you
just maybe he's a very nice gentleman. He's just just misinformed.
Don't give them the benefit of give them the benefit
of the doubt. And so they don't know what the plant.
They plant, like a hedge of Nandina's or something. But

(37:57):
then these birds dispersed, you drew, I think they're droops.
So they droops are berries. They're probably droops only one
seed inside. You know, they end up they end up
invading the Garia and Juniperus ashy i and uh ther
Mattophylum woodlands, and that make the Central Texas Edwards Plateau

(38:19):
what it is. And so anyway, I killed a bunch
of nandina too. It was nice. Just sawed it down
at Javier's rental. You know, I came back and he
was out of town. He won't care, he won't give
a shit. I'll cut this down, we'll rip them out
with a pickax because they spread by rhise on. I
guess and uh, and we'll plant some sonizos, some lucophylums

(38:40):
or something. You know. Luco Filum is kind of basic
bitch too, but at least it's native and it looks great,
and there's insects that eat the leaves that are supposed
to eat the leaves, native insects, and it flowers as
happy as a pig. And shit, that's that's one of
the best plants to plant in Central Texas. The Leucophylum
Protestants Texas sage not in the stage family at all,
same order, but the flowers are like these little preper

(39:03):
You get leucophile and minus in West Texas too. That's
a fucking banger which someone grew that. But you know,
you can plant that in July in full sun and
water it in and it's fucking it does great. It's amazing.
So yeah, so cut down some nandina, learn what it
is and cut it down. I went to fort Worth
Botanic Garden. I love sharing this anecdote because this is

(39:24):
so depressing and I hope it changes. But I remember
I went to fort Worth Botanic Garden in twenty twenty
because Britt had just I don't know if they had
just moved there, Botanical Research Institute of Texas had just
moved there and uh or moved into the same building.
I forget what. Anyway, I was going there to look
at Botanical Research Institute of Texas and they had they

(39:45):
had Siberian elm and Nandina Domestica planted his specimen trees.
Talk about depressing, like you imagine paying I don't know
what they're charging fifteen twenty bucks, you know, get into
the botanic garden and you see Nandina Domestica planted in
the beds. Oh god, that's brutal. That is so terrible.

(40:09):
Oh hey god, just what a You've been robbed of
an opportunity to learn, you know. But again, that's the
that's the way you view plants, right, It's this background
greenery for a fucking wedding photo or a corporate event. Anyway,
So we're at this this land, this parcel land going
basically up these small mess We didn't find any catainas

(40:31):
because it it grows in Pipe Creek nearby. I guess
there's a Texas Parks and Wildlife Park called Kowalski or Kowanowski,
I don't know, it sounds like a Polish name that's
opening soon. I guess they let people in in April
because there were a bunch of observations on Ininet from
that from that area, from that portion of land, but

(40:54):
it's not open now. So and then there was urbarium
collections from Pipe Creek, from Creek Ranch, which is now
owned by some fucking sketchy holding company. I don't know,
but it grows in the area, and so once I,
you know, you learn the habitat, like a Bull Creek
Park in Austin, it's growing on thin soiled limestone in

(41:15):
the upper reaches. So this is a very heat and
drought tolerant tree, it seems like, at least in the humid,
relatively music region of central Texas up to Missouri through Arkansas,
et cetera. So once you learn the habitat, then you
know what to look for. And so I, you know,
after a few minutes of being there, I was like, yeah,

(41:35):
I'd be surprised if it was here unless we come
up on like a you know, a river cut or
something like a spot where like the creek has been
cutting through a limestone mesa on a south facing wall
on you know, a south facing edge of the mesa,
and there's no soil there, and then maybe it can
maybe you know, it's growing in a place that can

(41:56):
avoid competition. Not a lot of stuff can get big there.
It doesn't like tis. At Saint Edwards University where which
is in Austin, someone had planted two or three of
these smoke trees and I saw it after I gave
the presentation in their little courtyard near the science building,
and there was a bunch of fucking ceilings coming up underneath,

(42:18):
which someone should dig up, hopefully someone that works at
the school. Maybe they could sell them or so. I
don't know, but someone who's concerned should should dig them up.
But do it in the winter when they're deciduous and
temperatures are cooler. You know, it's there's a time to
dig whatever, because they're not going to be able to
get big. They're growing underneath like a sable and something.

(42:40):
You know, it's too shady there. But it's cool to
see that those trees are obviously producing fruits and seeds
and that they're fertile, so they must have you know,
because the trees are dioecious. I think so they're trees
are either male or female, and and that they're there,
there's enough trees that they're producing seeds. Got to get

(43:00):
there and collect seeds at the right time. I didn't
see any seeds on any of the trees. I don't
know if they already fell off or what, but it
was fucking great to see. So we grabbed some cuttings
from those trees too, and then I left them in
Hoavier's fridge. So so I gotta get them next the
next weekend and bring him to James so we can
root them. Because that's a tree man. That's that's it's
such a fucking beautiful tree and it's it's so rare

(43:23):
and they're so cool, and uh, I would just you know,
that should be much more common than it is. But again,
we need a wholesale nursery. We need someone who's independently
wealthy and doesn't have to, you know, worry too much
about whether this thing generates enough revenue the first year
or two until it can get going. Momentum can get going,
and just start a wholesale nursery and grow, you know,

(43:46):
flats of plugs like eight inch deep plugs twenty to
a flat forty to a flat whatever like Pizo Nursery
in Illinois does.

Speaker 2 (43:56):
Shinada, Tomit Tubaville, you know Sinata, Tomit Tuberville shinned to
Tommy Tuberville. He took five hundred thousand dollars in bribes
from the oil and gush lobby. Then he tried to
shit on this tenants rubber down and see if he
could take it inside his buckering recutum. It was made
out of money. Senate to tomm At Tuberville. The climate,

(44:19):
he says, a climate cris It is a hooks Tomic Tuberville,
Tommy Tuberville, what's going on?

Speaker 1 (44:25):
I'm back. I took a little We took a little
sachet through the Davis Mountains yesterday through the private, mostly private.
That Davis Mountains is a tragedy of West Texas. You know,
it really is. And there's enough gates and gate keeping
among some of the bonders here, the higher uh, the

(44:45):
higher ups to get you know, it's the gatekeeping comes
out of insecurity. I think it's when people get really insecured,
they need their egos, they need to get sucked off
figuratively speaking, and they're not getting sucked off. Enough, you know,
the genuine passion and love for the science and the
escape from the human tumors. Not enough. They need to
get their egos sucked off a little bit, so they

(45:06):
do the you know, the gatekeep. But there's enough figurative
gates in Texas, and there's there's enough physical gates in Texas,
and there's many figurative ones too. Anyway, the Davis Mounds,
it's like entirely off limits except for a couple of
roadside spots, and even then there's public roads that go
up through some of these residential areas. It's weird. It's

(45:28):
funky up there, man, it's weird. There's a lot of
old people, lots of abandoned houses. And there was like
a standoff in the nineteen nineties some right wing nut
job with a bunch of guns. I can get down
with a gunsting the right wing nutjob thing. Not really,
not really my style, but anyway, he uh, he held
off a bunch of cops when it wasn't over anything
cool either. He just didn't want to pay his taxes.

(45:51):
He was whining about paying his taxes. Oh God, this
little puppy just farted. Jesus Christ, what the fuck, it
sounds like one of it smells like somewhat open end
up a gas station bathroom drain. I don't know how
he did they did he. I think he should already
already let him out anyway. So the Davis Mountains, uh,
you know, it's it's like a sky island in West Texas.

(46:12):
There's there's a bunch of cool plants up there. That's
why I wanted to go there. And a friend invited me.
He's got a little cabin and uh. And then we
just went gallivanting around looking at looking at stuff. We
found two old stone matates like they look like a
gravestone kind of but they're smoothed out, polished. They don't

(46:33):
you know, they're not jagged rocks. They obviously look like
they've been worked by people. And then they've got little
divots on the inside of them. If you want to
know what I'm talking about, look at that uh that
spirit I cave video I did two years ago from
West Texas, a place I'll probably never be allowed to
go again because it's owned by some rich freak billionaire
And I only got in because I was a friend

(46:53):
of a friend of the many archaeologists working at the site,
and that spot got like looted. They were like they
were fucking hawkys taking mummies out of there in the fifties.
You know, maybe Tommy Tuoberville's great grandpa was in there,
pillars in that cave. He paid forty in the right Tommy,
where the fuck is Tommy Tuberville from? Someone needs to

(47:15):
make a Tommy Tuberville dildo, you know, like a get
this fucking guy. Man, Where did these fucking guys come from?
His face is like the color of a pizza. Jesus,
Tommy Tuberville, tim My fucking Alabama. Here's Tommy?

Speaker 2 (47:33):
Is he?

Speaker 1 (47:34):
No? He is? He's coached. Tommy Tuberville. You were sitting
up from my Alabama used to get fucked in the
gas station bathroom. Old Tommy tubervillet his fucking look. Got
his fucking guy. You pink ride. He's like a little
pink ride with a flabby turkey neck. God, these you
should be banned from running for politics if you're age

(47:57):
seventy year older. Just fucking no. Go sit on a
beach somewhere, Sit the fuck down, Go smoke a Dubey
had Okay, you don't like smoking pot, You have to
smoke pot at age seventy, right, and so you hit seventy,
you're forced to just smoke weed on a beach somewhere.
If you're a politician, No, sit the fuck down. Go
sit down on the beach, relax, do your golf game.

(48:18):
Whatever the fuck. Dumb shit they would have. What did
old honkys do? They did no offense to any old
honkys that aren't like this. By the way, I'll be
an old honkey one day. Anyway, time at Tuberville, got
I just I saw a video of this guy that
just fucking pissed me off. It was like this fucking
this relict, this relic of a bygone area era that

(48:40):
the America is still desperately trying to cling to define,
you know, and did complete denial of the reality. Anyway,
So in the Davis Mountains, we're going around, we found
this cave. It was like a It wasn't like a cave.
It was like a little divot in this rhyo light,
maybe twenty feet long, six feet tall, and there were

(49:01):
stone matats and they were little grinding they had like
on the embankment of the cave maybe three feet up
they had I don't even know how old. That's crazy
to think how old this is too. It could be
five hundred years, could be three thousand. They had kind
of grinded into the embankment and they were a little

(49:22):
There were like five little looks like I don't know
what do you call them grinding stones. They're like divots.
It's like a cup. It looks like a cup in
the rhyolight. But there were small ones that looked like
maybe they were mixing pigments. And there was a big
one that was pretty deep. And these are they were
all filled in with pack rad shit. But those matates
were fucking nuts. Man. It was cool to see the

(49:43):
actual pounding stones weren't there anymore. But they were like
these pizza box sized six inch thick pieces of stone.
They looked like granite, so they were obviously carted in
from somewhere. Who to fuck carts those things too? Like
when these groups would move, God, what I would do
it to just be able to go back in time
and like hang out with them, assuming they weren't pissed off.

(50:05):
They wouldn't have been pissed off. You know. This is
before any euros Gate came over and gave us a
bad name. It was like fifteen hundred years ago. You know,
you get to you know, you get an average size
little wop in there. You know, I couldn't speak to them,
but I'd hang out with them, do it. You know
I could do. I can pantomime really well and just
talk to them, hang out with them for a few months,

(50:26):
learner language, you know, and just see how they move
through the landscape and the plants they use. And god,
it's so it's so incredible to think about, and what
a beautiful area it must have been back then. I
gotta say it was looking rough when we were there.
There were a lot of dead pondies, a lot of
dead ponderosa pines because this Davis Mountains whole, all of

(50:47):
West Texas has been in a brutal drought for the
last decade, right like far below average rainfall totals, and
then in the last month and a half it's just
been pissed on like storming, flooding, gets you know, the
fucking rivers here are still draining. It's really cool to
see and everyone I talked to Powell at the you know,

(51:08):
the curator at the your burium at Seul Ross or
Eastern or anyone they're like, this is what it used
to be like twenty years ago. You get these monsoons,
these these afternoon rainstorms every afternoon, and since I have
been coming here the last four years, it's just been
windy as hell and dry. You'll get like a half
inch of rain. Half inch of rain is something that like,

(51:29):
oh wow, we got a half inch of rain. It
was a big deal, you know, But it's got pissed
on lateies. So like that all this stuff was waking up.
But you can still tell. There's dead trees everywhere, dead madrones.
The Davis Mountains like many sky islands, and for those
of you who don't know what a sky island is,
it's literally an island in the sky. It's a more music,
higher rainfall containing plants that normally are not found in deserts. Right,

(51:56):
it's a it's an island in the desert. It's a
sky island, and it's a island of a more music
plant community in an ocean of lower, lower, lying, lower
rainfall desert. And so that's what the Davis Mountains are.
They got an observatory up there. You know. It's uh,
there's public roads you can drive on, but again it's

(52:17):
like it's Texas. Everything's private. So you know you're driving around,
someone's gonna come sniff on you with your down up here,
and you know, you tell them, I'm just out here
looking at stuff. I'm a biologist and botanist whatever. Better
not to say bodanist because I think they probably associate
that with a tree hugger. You know, it's a cultural
that you gotta work around, the cultural retardation. Some people
don't like when I say that word retard, but I'm

(52:39):
I've been. I try not to use it too much
just because it can be a little crass, but I do.
The thing I like about the word retard is no one,
no one's actually gonna use it against someone who's mentally
disabled unless you're a complete sociopath. It's not like other
slurs that have actually been weaponized, right, No, who the
fuck would actually make fun of someone who's mentally disabled?
Who wouldn't you know, why would not use compassion? You know,

(53:02):
you'd be a fucking sociopath. But also, the thing I
like about it the most is like it's the people
that are really upsets are the kinds of like like whiny,
you know, stiff, stodgy, generally Caucasian, always Caucasian actually from
academic academia or over educated of some kind, stiffs who

(53:25):
are gonna like really like they bristle it hearing it,
you know, and then they're like they have to speak up,
you know, filter, they have to put you through the filter,
you know. And those are the people I don't like.
I don't don't. I don't care if their values are
the same as mine. I don't care if they I
like their ideology or agree with it. The way they
behave sucks. And they're also what's what's they're responsible for

(53:49):
ruining a lot of American culture too. They really are,
They really fucking are just as much as the fucking
mega moron, you know, whatever the fuck this I mean,
because really, in a period of cultural decline, you got
dipshits and idiots on both sides. Certainly ones more virulent
than the other, you know. Certainly one is you know,

(54:10):
trying to you know, steal from the poor to give
to the rich much more. They both do it, but
the least both political parties. Let's not get into it.
I don't want to talk politics. But anyway, so you
get this thing where it's like no one can imagine
the private property here is no one can imagine that.
You're just out the suspicion, in the paranoia. I've rant

(54:31):
it about this before, you know. Whereas like in Mexico,
someone finds you on their property, they don't automatically assume
the worst. They ask you what the hell you're doing.
You tell them and then they either leave you alone
or they hang out with you for the next couple
hours if they have time, and show you, you know, fosis,
cool fossils they found on their land. There's some cool plants.
They're like, a cool you know whatever, right that happened

(54:55):
to me, And that's happened to me a number of times,
you know, Baha and fucking wahaka or wherever, and they're
you're curious. You talk to him and they're like, okay, cool,
you can hang out here for a while. Or they'll
be like no, it's not this is I'm doing something
with this or whatever. But they're always nice. They're never
this paranoid. You know, double digit IQ, you must be

(55:16):
doing something wrong, like the guy had in uh in
Southern Brewster County. Guy freaked out. He told me I
was stealing because I was collecting seeds from Caste list
the wordy I and he just seemed I mean, he
just seemed like a miserable, fucking alcoholic. Like a lot.
There's Alcoholism's bad out here, you know. It's the culture

(55:39):
of West Texas is not my favorite. It's not my favorite,
I'll be honest with you. A lot a paranoia, suspicion,
people shit talk on each other. I just see it,
you know, whether it's like on the Facebook town forums
or whether it's a I mean, there's a lot of
unhappy people who probably need a lot of therapy. I

(56:00):
think you need a lot of therapy. Fuck it, dose them, dose,
give them, give them dosed therapy. You know, you're working
out forty to fifty years of undiagnosed mental trauma, untreated
you know, ego disturbances and self hate and insecurities and these,
you know, the typical it's just all part of the
same poison we have here in mainstream American culture. Okay, anyway,

(56:25):
but yeah, this this archaeological site was incredible, and it
made me think, Man, if you sifted through see I
think it's important to respect the culture that these artifacts
came from. But I also think it's really there's a
lot of insight that's worth getting from this, and there's

(56:46):
a way to ethically do that to still get that
insight and study things, you know. But if I fucking
hate people who go to places like that and take
stuff too, that's such a dick move, right, leave it there.
Right when you take it, You're you're stealing information. First off,
it's not yours, it's it belongs to the culture that
it came from, in this case, the hu Monols. Who

(57:07):
knows how old that is. But also you know you're
you're stealing. It's you're stealing from the commons. You're stealing
knowledge from the comments about people who lived on this
land and inhabited it. It's all part of the human story.
So anyway, But I bet if you sifted through that
you'd find god knows how many flakes and other whatever,

(57:28):
you know. But I just love thinking about what what
that landscape must have been like back then, Probably much
more pleasant to live in, much more wildlife. You know,
the hockey death cult hadn't come and you know, shot
most of the most of the predators and wildlife, and
uh man, I don't know, it's yeah, but the landscape,

(57:49):
you know, was still recovering. And that was something I noticed,
is like there was dead trees everywhere. And then the
feral donkeys are really bad there too, which look, I
love donkeys as much as anyone, but there's too many
of them and they destroy the landscape, you know. And
and frankly, some of the animal lovers, some of those
people freak me out. I think they're sociopaths, you know,

(58:10):
I think they're hiding they have, a lot of them
i've met have a hate for humanity, which I don't have.
Actually love people as individuals, they're fun. The human behavior
when it's in groups bums me to fuck out. I
avoid at all costs, but you know, and it's predictable.
But individuals, that's where there's hope. You know, individuals who
defy the conformity and really you know, go about the

(58:34):
purposes of self insight, learning who they are, self education,
et cetera. But some of the animal people, really have
you see them in like the comments section or the
ones that I've met. I just hate people. I hate them,
you know. So whether it's the feral cat people, some
of the horse people, and I fucking love horses, some
of them are definitely mentally ill. There's definitely some mental
illness among that contingent. But uh, you know, I don't

(58:56):
know if you have to call the feral donkeys or
what you could ster a you know, waste tons of
money doing that, not catch all of them and then whatever.
But I think you know, round them up, take them
to a petting zoos somewhere. That would be the ideal
thing if you could do that. I don't know how
you could do that, though, you know, it's hard, it's
rough terrain. Shooting them certainly seems easier. It sucks, but

(59:18):
you know, they're really destroying the landscape, and they're they're
doing it to the Mojave too. And all the botanists
and friends with that have surveyor jobs out of the
Mojave note it. They see the intense damage that's done.
And there's no predators to keep them in check. It's
just simple ecological math, right, same thing that's happened to
the deer in most of Central Texas. There's no predators.

(59:39):
There's a few people hunting them, and so they just
decimate the landscape and then they end up getting hit
by cars, you know, causing accidents. But anyway, so the
feral donkeys are bad in the Davis Mountains. They're doing
a lot of damage, but there's still a ton of
cool plants. You know. I would have loved to see
it even in like the nineteen forties or fifties. I
bet there was. It was just in much better shape. Yeah,

(01:00:02):
there's madrones up there. There's Qurcus rugosa. I don't know
the common name of Corcus rugosa. It's a beautiful oak
with leathery coriaceous leaves that are that are obovate and
and have this beautiful yellow pubescence on the under side
and kind of like ruffled margins. It's a beautiful fucking tree.

(01:00:23):
I've grown up before. I used to have one in
my yard in Oakland. They got they got a bunch
at uc Berkeley Botanic Garden. It's very common in Mexico.
It goes from Sky Islands in Sonora. There's even some
in southern Arizona, and the sky Island's up there. I
think I'm Mount Lemon. Corcus hype lucoids is up there too,
or hype Luca what is it? Corcus hype luca? I

(01:00:45):
forget anyway, hype lucoids. I think that's up there too,
And that's also in the Davis Mountains. You know, beautiful
oaks and they're they're getting kind of snuffed out. They're
not doing very well. The populations are small. They've been
hit really bad by out Arcto Staffalos pungons. I think
that's the only spot in West Texas and only state,
in only spot in Texas that Arcto Stapflos pungens the manzanita.

(01:01:09):
It looks like a mini madrone with smaller leaves, still
has that beautiful red bark. Related to madrones. Arcto Staphlos,
of course, is a huge genus with you know, ninety
six taxa in it. Most of the diversity is in
central coastal California, but I mean they're everywhere. It's a
fucking great genus. They associate with a lot of cool

(01:01:30):
basidio my seat ectomicrohizol mushrooms. But Arcdor Staphfalos punges is
in the Davis Mountains. It's on U, it's on I
think the boy Scout Camp property up there. But you
know it's there's no way to get to it, you know,
unless you like helicopter in and then steal your trespassing
so uh but like, you know, these these these literal

(01:01:54):
sky islands, there's so much cool stuff, tons of madrones.
There's Mandavilla hypoluca there, which is a really cool, you know,
moth pollinated member of apossan ace and it's got narrow leaves.
Mandavilla has three species in it in Texas, maybe more.
I know Lenugenosa, which we get in South Texas. I
got that in my front yard. I got. There's Mandavilla macrosciphon.

(01:02:18):
You know, there are these small woody shrubs with these
really beautiful white flowers that bloom at night, pollinated by
moths and like many moth pollinated flowers that kind of
smell like jasmine. Ecaveria is strict. The flora was blooming.
That was a really cool one. That's a big rosette.
They can get big, man, I didn't realize how big
they can get. It's, you know, Ecaveria. It's a succulent

(01:02:38):
rosette forming succulent relatives of a lot of the quote
succulent plants. You know, like you look at the tag,
it's just such succulent that you could buy. Like the
home despot garden section. There's a native one Ecavera is
strict the flora. And you know, you've got Dudleya, which
is related to Ecoveria, but that's the California version adapted
to a different precipitation regime. DUDLEYA huge genus in California,

(01:03:01):
lots of different species, goes on down into Baja too,
and you get one or two species in Arizona. That's
as far east as they come. They're mostly adjusted to
winter rain like California is. But then Ecavaria is adapted
to winter, dry summer rain like most of Mexico is.
And that was going off. He's setting up these eighteen

(01:03:23):
inch inflorescences of pink flowers, beautiful plants. Supposely you can
take the leaves off, like the basal leaves off. You
gotta get the whole bit, just like you can do
with pinkuicula, and you can root them. You just put
it in soil and you let it root, or just
I think laying it on top of soil. It'll send
roots out of the bottom of that leaf base. You know.

(01:03:45):
And I've seen them. They're not uncommon in West Texas,
but whenever I've seen them in the last year or two,
they look like shit because we've been in such a
bad drought and these were all juiced up. Going off.
There was tons of mushrooms coming up. Lepiota saw a
couple of amonitas, tons of kylanthoid ferns, the fuzzy ferns,
the desert ferns, and kylanthoid E subfamily Meriopthus astro Leapis

(01:04:11):
Bomeria hispota. Really cool fucking ferns. I think I just
killed nine, by the way. I germinated some astro Leapis
from spore and I had him at seventy five degrees
in my house under lights under that spider for spider
Farmer makes this great shelf light like eli ed thing.
They sent me one, and uh, it's great. It's like

(01:04:32):
a it's like right next to my bookshelf. It's like
six feet tall too, And so I had him under
there with a They were in a ziploc bag, but
the ziploc bag was open and they were just starting
to get some height on him, and then I brought
him up. I was going to give him to James,
I don't know why, just to put in his greenhouse,
and I fucking they started to die immediately, like the
increase in heat, and I think they weren't getting as

(01:04:54):
much light, like they need a lot of light they do,
and that was that was perfect. Those is that the
spider former lights. I think it's like eighteen thousand lux
or something, so not as strong as direct hot sunlight,
but u but like perfect, you know, perfect for growing
kinlanthoid ferns. But yeah, the cicadas were out, it was loud,

(01:05:18):
the creeks were flowing. Everything was green. It was a
beautiful time. And I wo just I took his We
didn't you know. We walked like three and a half
four miles, but it's up and down and through some
fucked up terrain and over rya like crags and shit.
It was brutal. And then my friend who I was
walking with, Brad, I looked at it at the end
of the day, we were chilling on his little porch

(01:05:40):
and I looked and saw I'm like, oh shit, this
guy is where he's wearing moccasins. He's wearing like just
like leather wrapped around his feet. And I was like, man,
how the fuck he did that whole hike? And He's like, yeah,
I've been I started barefoot running like three or four
years ago, and he's not one of those people that
you know consistently tells you about it. You know, you

(01:06:03):
get that he's just you know, he made no mention
of it. And then I realized later, I'm like, god damn.
Then it made me think I'm wearing these steel toe
boots because I think they just give me better traction,
and I'm just used to it because that's what the
railroad used to get us. You know, they'd pay for
half of it, You pay for half. They're somewhat comfortable,
but they're also heavy as hell, and so I was

(01:06:24):
hiking in these things and I realized, like, man, this
is that dude's foot must be so like the musculature
must be so different from mine. It must like it
must be he must have such a perfectly sculpted foot,
which is what humans evolved with, probably less knee pain
because when you're running barefoot, I guess the most of

(01:06:45):
the shock goes right you're running on the you walk differently,
you walk more on the ball of your foot, and
so you're not doing heel strikes, and so that the
shock hits you much differently, and it's you got better shocks,
you know, It's like a car with better struts. Using
the arch of your foot kind of is like the
struts on a truck the shocks on a truck to

(01:07:08):
absorb most of the shock. But I don't know, maybe
one day I'll do that. Certainly does seem like it's
more pleasant, you know, for your knees and posture, and
you get you just get better developed muscles. But anyway,
a plant that I was kind of surprised to see
up there that I had never seen before was Aspacarpa

(01:07:30):
hortella and it's you know, it's like most members of
mal piggy acy. You see those flowers and they're unmistakable.
All male piggy as have flowers that look like that
five distinct petals. They look like a paddle, so they're
tapered at the end. I guess they call it a
pedal claw. And then they've got these little glands at

(01:07:50):
the base of the flower that produce oil. Right, Galfimia
and Gusta folia and the Edwards Plateau around the Austin
area produce the same kind of flower. You know, a
lot of the I was seeing a shit ton of
malpigs malpiggy ac in Mina's your eyes. Brazil. It's mostly
a subtropical family, but you get a couple that that

(01:08:12):
they have distributions that extend into temperate latitudes. But uh,
you know, ask a couple hotel. I had to figure
out what it was malpiggy a c. Because you don't
normally see many members of malpiggy Ac in West Texas.
So I went to sw Biodiversity Dot Oregon was looking
through robarium collections for the family malpiggy Ac for the

(01:08:33):
county jeff Davis County, and came across it and I
was like, that's it. That's the that's the fucking that's
what I saw. That's wild. It's a new one for me.
You know, like inch wide ovate leaves, they're opposite and
uh it's a little herb with probably a large root underground.
And it's probably been most of these, like most things here,
has been dormant for for a year or two, if

(01:08:57):
not longer, since the last time they got a good
already rain. Saw Adelphia Infesta too. I don't know why
they call it infesta. It's a cool little photosynthetic stemmed
so just green stems and kind of negligible leaves with
you know in the Buckdorn family, so tiny white flowers
maybe size of a marble, smaller than the size of

(01:09:18):
a marble, five petals, nothing too showy, but a distinct
scent to it, making me think maybe because of that
scent in the white flowers, maybe it's fly pollinated, had
kind of like a starchy smell to it. And then
the oaks, we didn't see any of the super cool
oaks like Corcus rugosa. I think there's one more that's
pretty rare, but we saw that the Qrcus and Morii

(01:09:41):
in Hypoluchoids, which is my one of my favorite like
bright white, silver undersized, beautiful fucking oak, and I came
across one that uh Adam Black told me is a
it's a hybrid between gravesy eye and Hypoluchoides. It looks
like hype Luchoids has got that white pubescents that's silver underside,

(01:10:03):
but then it's got teeth to it, really beautiful fucking
oh and apparently it's it's you know, reproducing readily by
acorn up there. I'd love to get some acorns of
that whenever, whenever they pop. But again with like with
most of the stuff up there, it's all private, so
you have to you know, getting access as a pain,
total pain in the ass, and everyone's paranoid nuts too.

(01:10:26):
It was wild to see that because of the the
drought and the amount of oaks that had died up,
their oaks and madrones, you know, when they die and
then suddenly this ground is exposed to sun. What ends
up thriving and taking over this what the my friend
was calling cat claw plant. But it's Mimosa bionciphera. It's
a white flowered mimosa. It's you know, cat claw I

(01:10:49):
normally think of as the genus Senegalia, from the same
family Mimo soidy, it's a mimosa. It's got little so
it's got little like powder puff inflorescences, like the flour
the flowers are mostly when that quote powderpuff, what you're
seeing are the filaments from the stamens and the petals
and sepals are very reduced. And then those anthers just

(01:11:09):
stick way out there and they've got to smell to them.
The flowers do, and you've got all, you know, eighty
flowers grouped together in a little spherical inflorescence looks like
a little ball, you know, misk Texas, Ebony, Guahio, mimosa.
All the members of mimo Soiti, the Mimosdi subfamily, do this. Caleiandra.

(01:11:31):
It's the common name for that fairy duster some shit,
I don't know, some stupid common name. Fairy duster. Ah, yes,
fairy duster, a name I would never a word I
would never in a million years using my day to
day life. But it's so much easier to say than Caleandra,
of which there's you know, dozens of species of Calandra,

(01:11:52):
so you know the genus now you know, you know, oh,
this is a Calandra. This is probably a Calandra took
it looks like a Caliandra. A fairy d fuck out
of here, oh my god, that you know. I'm not
against all common names, just the misleading and stupid ones.
And fairy dust there's certainly one of them. Feather duster,
feather what did feather balls? What is it called? Anyway,

(01:12:16):
So there was this Mimosa by in siffer Its white
flower of mimosa, with these really mean claw It gets
to like three or four feet tall, thrives in full sun,
nitrogen fixing roots, and so these were kind of taking
over and they were really abundant because the last two
three years of drought with you know, minimal rainfall that
they've got, and this plant's been able to thrive while

(01:12:37):
the oaks have been dying and the madrones have been dying,
and these massive ponderoses have been dying. How many ponduroses
were there? You know, what did the composition of that
forest look like when those stone grinding matatees were brought there?
You know, it must have looked night and day. It
must have been much more wooded, much more music, much

(01:13:01):
more pleasant. Probably grizzlies there. Probably where there grizzlies in
West Texas, I had imagine, So why, why the fuck not?
What would have stopped them from getting there?

Speaker 2 (01:13:11):
You know?

Speaker 1 (01:13:12):
Probably you know, millions of bison in the state back
then too. I love thinking about like that, man, God damn,
but now, you know, at least we got BUCkies in Walmart.
It's like, isn't there a middle ground? Isn't there like
a middle ground between you know, dying of polio and

(01:13:34):
completely fucking the landscape into a coma so that it's
one of the ugliest landscapes in the first world, and
you've created this populace of complete you know, entitled angry
miserable morons, you know, who vote against their own interest.
I don't know, maybe no offense entitled angry miserable morons.
You know, It's not their fault for being stupid. It's

(01:13:55):
just everyone's a victim of the culture that they grow
up in. Right. Most people are, I hate to say it,
it's predictable. Most people don't go anywhere else, you know,
psychologically or intellectually speaking. They just the carpets laid out
in front of them. Their path is already chosen by
their culture, and they follow that. You grow up in

(01:14:16):
a garbage culture, you're gonna chances are most of what
you're gonna put out there, most of what you're gonna
take in, is garbage, right, I guess for that reason,
I'm glad I got into punk rock when I was young.
I already hated everything, you know, I already hated society
when I was twelve, right, twenty years of doing stupid

(01:14:37):
shit though, you know, I certainly anyway, So, yeah, it
was it was God, it was so fucking cool. It
was so wonderful to be there. So and we you know,
just just I just touched on a smattering of the
biological diversity there, and you could tell that you'd see something,

(01:15:00):
but you wouldn't see a lot of it, like I
saw hissperidantis. It's a purple flowered you know, native mustard
relative Brassic casey. I mean four petals for sepals, six stamens.
The shape of the sepals have a certain look to them.

Speaker 2 (01:15:15):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:15:15):
You know it's a mustard when you see it and
you see the fruits on one that's already gone, the fruit,
these long stileaks. You know it's a mustard family. But
I only saw I mean it's a common plant. It
should be. I only saw a few of them. I mean,
it's just I think the drought just hit those mountains
so bad that it's taken I mean, it's still taking
a while for stuff to come back. You know, what

(01:15:36):
didn't die was able to just actually go dormant, and
the roots didn't die. What didn't die, you know, or
what did dye that you know, that population is just
you hope that there's a good a good soil seed
bank that stuff can regenerate from. But then you've got
these I mean hundreds of feral donkeys that just come

(01:15:57):
by and mow everything down every couple months, you know, so,
and you couple that with extended drought and you could
just start to see the landscape changing. You know, the mimosa.
The donkeys obviously don't hit the mimosa. It's got thorns
on it and it can take the full sun. So,

(01:16:18):
you know, you lose a lot of the oak diversity,
the cool oaks up there, of which there's like four
or five species. And then, of course, since the oaks
are ectomicro hizol, when those die, you and how you're
changing the you know, the microbial community. A lot of
those ectomicro rhyzol fungi can't thrive anymore since their host
trees are gone, and you start to see what's happening.

(01:16:40):
You're getting a completely you're turning more into like a
desert mountain, less of a sky island and more of
a desert mountain. So the whole reason I wanted to
go to the Davis Mountains in the first place was
to study, to take photos of and maybe collect some
of the fungi that are going there, because there hasn't
been so far as I know, a proper fungal survey

(01:17:01):
of the mushrooms that occur there, the fungi that occur there,
and I know there, I knew there'd be a lot
of michael Rhizol species due to the oaks and the
madrones and the pines, but it seemed like, I mean,
there were a lot of mushrooms coming up, but it
was still pretty early. A lot of stuff wasn't flowering
yet or was just starting to flower. And uh, and

(01:17:21):
it's such a big fucking mountain range, and it's so
it's all divided again. It's like access is impossible, like
so many places in West Texas. And so that means
that not only is the body of knowledge compromised, and
it's it's hard to study and you have to get act.
It's just a fucking nightmare. But also of course people
are cut off from their own land and have no

(01:17:41):
idea what grows there. It's all just because someone put
their name on it whatever. You know, a lot of
these parcels aren't even owned or aren't even occupied. The
thing I really want to see there, though, is that
Arcto Staffalos pungeins now Arcto Staffelos pungeons again, a species
of man's in needa. It's one of the most widespread

(01:18:02):
species next to Arcto Staphalos uva ersy. Arcto Staphalos uva
ersy grows along the shores of Lake Michigan and many
other high latitude places. I think it's circumpolar. I think
it grows in Europe too, as you would expect from
higher latitude plants, you know, I mean closer to the pole.
You know, the distance between areas of longitude are a

(01:18:26):
lot shorter. So anyway, but archdo staphlos ubercy yet grows,
Wisconsin grows, and fucking I think it's even in Indiana
along the shores of Lake Michigan. I don't know, but
pungens is the next most widespread one common throughout western
North America. I've seen it in Nuevo Leone growing on
gypsum down there, you know. But I really like this

(01:18:50):
Texas disc junk like I would love to get that
into propagation. And you know, Mike Easton's already trying to.
I guess he visited and took some air layered cuttings,
you know for San Antonio botanic arm But man, I
would love to maybe get some seed. It can be,
you know, like many of the Arctostaphalos are. They're hard.

(01:19:11):
They're hard the German a. You need a smoke treatment
or scarification. The seeds are very long lived. They're called
manzanitas because the berries look like like little apples, and
you know, it's like madrone, it's got that weird fungal
association and the roots don't have they lack root hairs,

(01:19:33):
so they're much more sensitive roots than most plants. They
lack root hairs. They can do that because they rely
on micro rhizo fungi for most of their nutrient acquisition.
So you know, manzanitas are hard to grow, but they're
not impossible. There's a couple that are, you know, common
in cultivation in California. Doctor Herd is a cultivar. I
think that species is actually Arctostaphalos manzana. What does the

(01:19:55):
species in doctor Herd? I think the species is manzanita.
But you know, madrones aren't that impossibly that it's just hard.
It's a thirty foot tall madrone at Suos University in Alpine,
Texas madrone. So it's totally doable. But again, you need
to get sourced. You need to source materials somehow, so
you know, that'd be a fuck, and that's a huge

(01:20:16):
disc junk. That's like the equivalent of that deming that
Cook's Peak Arizona cypress population in southern New Mexico, Like
the nearest population of pungens is like three or four
hundred miles away. So these are place to see relics.
They are relics of a much different time and there
was probably I mean, that's not even the highest point
in the Davis Mountains where it grows on the northeast

(01:20:38):
side near the boy Scout Camp. You can look on
sw Biodiversity Dot Oregon final old orbarium collections. The last,
the latest one is from the late eighties. But it's
not even the highest point. That's just kind of where
it ended up. I don't know what specifically about that
northeastern flank of the Davis Mountains, but goddamn, that would
be a cool one to see and collect the specimen

(01:21:01):
of and try and get seeds of it. And I bet,
I bet there's probably gonna be a bunch of fruits,
you know, ready in a few months. So and that's
not even Nature conservd that's not even on the Nature
Conservancy land. You'd have to hit the hit up the
boy Scout Camp who owns this scout camp, you know,
maybe go there August. I presume being a scout camp,

(01:21:24):
they're probably busy for the summer, but maybe in the
down season, the off season, like September, you go out there. Anyway.
In other news, South Texta's been getting hit with a
ton of rain. We found a baby horned lizard at
Thorn Scrubs Sanctuary, which was a god that was really
exciting to see, like a tiny one. I didn't even

(01:21:44):
see it. Aaron saw it. I was showing him a
little peyote in the ground and there was this tiny
fucking Fryina soma there. It was wild. It was so
cool to I mean, they blend in so well. It
looks like it's almost like it's a different ecotype, like
they blend in more with the substrate of that fine
silty calichi clay soil. And there's lots of barren soil,

(01:22:06):
like it's so hot. That's the cool thing about thorn
scrub is there's whole patches where it's just barren, there's
nothing growing. And that's why buffalo grass has been such
a bummer, because it's just it invades so effectively and
then it's able to colonize those barren spots where there
might otherwise be cacti or or whatever cacti if anything.
I mean, I remember showing up to the Rio Grand

(01:22:28):
Valley in twenty fourteen and going to Chihuahuah Woods and Mission,
which is just a mess. Now. Nature Conservancy was running
it for a while, kind of neglected it and abandoned it,
and then it got taken over by the Butterfly Center
and they're still they're kind of neglecting it. Last I checked.
Needs a lot of maintenance, that needs you know, invasive removal.
But god, I saw some of the coolest cactus populations there, man,

(01:22:50):
Maalaria hyder i. Huge clumps it kind of serious pentalofus,
huge clumps of it, barren soil in between that just
turns to mud whenever it gets wet. And then there
were just these massive clumps of cacti. And then I
think the pigs have mostly uprooted most of those, and
then the buffalo grass moved in and it's just been
it's been brutal. It's been brutal to watch. But but yeah,

(01:23:13):
that barren soil, there's a bunch of that at thorn Scrub.
It's so nice. Man, there's parts of thorn scrub where
you can see what the thorn scrub habitat used to
look like, like we have there's buffalo grass on the margins.
We're gonna have to tackle that at some point, probably
just weed wag it and then spray it after we
weed wag it. But uh or maybe I guess we
could use a grass selective herbicide, but god damn, you

(01:23:35):
need a lot. And I don't know. I don't know
too much about the grass selective herbicides or toxicity or
any of that, but so I'm not sure how much
I want to spray. But you know, there's areas in
the inland from the road where you can actually see
what thorn scrub habitat should look like. You know, these

(01:23:57):
like there's God, there's I found this one spot. There's
this massive like sixty feet wide by twenty feet tall,
not too tall, branches early and maybe not even twenty
feet tall, maybe like twelve feet tall, and maybe it's
maybe it's forty feet white. Maybe I'm embellishing a little bit, probably,
but under this one misky there were like thirty tiny
payote ceilings, dime sized payote ceilings, and it's a gentle slope,

(01:24:19):
so you could see all this when the water moves,
it's moving downhill and it brushes all the dead misky
leaves and duff. They'll be like a stick laying across
the ground and the water pushes the duff up against that.
I mean, it's flowing, but it must be in most
of the area is a gentle flow, but it's definitely flowing.
You can see where the water's pushed little beaver dams

(01:24:41):
of debris up, and that's where these little payote ceilings germinate.
And it's in the shade. It's not you know, it's
hot as balls, but it's in the shade. It's like
a bright shade, but it's still the shade. It's such
a cool it's such a unique habitat. I put something
on the face crook page didn't take like a proper
ass video. I've been kind of flaking on and uh

(01:25:04):
doing you know, anything but short videos lately. It's just
been I've been I've been doing short form content, you know,
for the for the zoomer generation with no attention span.
We're all just stuck into these phones. God, it's fucking
it's like to like shake myself out of it sometimes.

(01:25:25):
But anyway, Yeah, so there was a fring of soma
there and then we've just been monitoring everything. We got
that other pig. We need more, we need to get
more traps, and then we're applying for grants for fencing
and uh and probably a grant for one or two
more pig traps. I mean, the idea, the ideal thing
to do would just be have like have four of
these these cage traps across the property. Because there's still

(01:25:51):
coming and there's pig. It's gonna be just a constant thing.
You just got to keep trapping them and shooting them,
trapping and shooting them, and they just they do so
much damage. Huge clumps of peyoti uproaded, huge clumps of
Mammalaria spherica and hyder eye uprooted. They eat the roots
on nose, but immensely destructive animals. Anyway, I'm gonna get going,
I said, I got, I got a bunch of shit

(01:26:12):
I gotta do. I gotta take off and we're going
to Costa Rica and the eighth for this this expedition,
this this fungal it's like a fungal survey. I'm gonna
be there for plants, but mostly it's going to be
to see what mushrooms are coming up in the cloud forest.

(01:26:34):
And then I'll be speaking with Alan Rockefeller at the
New Mexico Mycological Society in Cloudcroft. What is it July
thirty one through like August second or third. And then
maybe I might go to Colorado for a minute because
there's a fungus fare there. I might be just tagging
along with him, with Alan and Mandy for a while,

(01:26:54):
and then I don't know, and then I'm gonna be
in Illinois at some point in early September, and then
I think headed up to Minnesota in mid September. I
don't know, man, I have to have to look. I
don't even know where I'm going anymore. Just have it
written down and where am I going today? What I
do it next week? What I have to do. But yeah,
you can if you want to support Thorn Scrub. We're

(01:27:15):
selling shirts forty two bucks free shipping. I mean five
bucks of that is shipping, and then the rest all
goes to Thorn Scrub. I don't take any of that.
It's a direct benefit to the nonprofit. And what else.
I think that's it. There's a bunch of other shit
going on too. I got a book coming out in
April and a bunch of other stuff as well. But yeah,

(01:27:37):
I don't know Davis Mountains. You ever get a chance
to go inspect the Davis Mountains, do it in Sky Island,
West Texas. You know, there's God, there's so much, so
much out here to still be documented and recorded. Really
exciting stuff, really cool again. It's just accesses everything, right,
there's no public land here anyway. It's all I got

(01:27:57):
have igress your day, go fuck you up by