Most of our land looks like this.  It is rugged terrain, rocky and overgrown, where few bipeds will ever roam.  The rocks are covered with just enough moss to make them slippery, and they’re still jagged and hard enough to break bones if you fall on them.  Many of the plants are barbed or spiny and if they touch your skin they will sting all day.  And so will the bees, and so will the wasps.  The legion of carpenter ants are actually the most benign denizens of the jungle.

This is an old, decomposed tree stump that is so big that two trees are growing out of it.  Read that again.  Two trees make root in this tree stump.  And not just little saplings, they’re 40′ cedars.  Growing out of a tree stump.

These were my gardening tools today.  My big saw, the Fiskars trimmers and a $5 machete.  Against the jungle, they just didn’t seem sufficient.