Merla Barberie wrote:
"I think you're complicating the issue." Charles Rogers scuffed the soil with a foot. "Maybe the answer is here and that's why you stopped - for it surely was not to ask the way to Bombala.""The soil has a pH from 6.5 to 5.9 and the CEC for the 6.5 bare soil is 4.0. A hawkweed patch has a CEC of 8.7. Putting missing elements back into the soil is a good strategy for a farm, how about for a whole 8-mile road or a county weed program? Now I've gone and said too much. I've gotten a lot of help from Australians on the Net and this trip is my last hurrah at trying to do anything. I'm ready to retreat to my own land and just do Bio-dynamics. People in my neighborhood don't want the spray, but aren't willing to put time and energy into the road themselves. If I don't make it back to Idaho, there's no one to take my place..."
"It wasn't?"
"No, er, ma'am, sorry, I don't know your name, I guess I should have introduced myself: I'm Charles Rogers. How are you? Oh, Amanda is it? OK. The road is higher than we are, I can't see your car from here; that means you could not have seen into this paddock when you were driving or from where it is now. Intuition brought you to a stop here, not logic. Intuition - and energy, perhaps. I'm a great believer in the power of energy to achieve things. By the way, you're a singer as well as a herbalist, aren't you? Serious, I mean, choir or chorale, not just around the family piano on a Sunday night?"
"Yes, I am! But how did you know?"
"Certain characteristics - the way you talk, breathe, move, hold yourself. There will be others, hidden; an ear for pitch or tone, an ability to read music, an ambition to be good at what you do for as long as possible and so on. Probably the most common characteristic is the drive for survival. All living things have it; people, animals, insects, plants, soil and the millions of creatures that live within it and make the medium itself into a living organism. If we were to take one of each of these categories and break them down, analyse and compare their contents, we would find similar living processes, nutrients and elements. That the atoms which power our multi-purpose cells are the same in every way as that which energises the single-celled amoeba."
Charles smiled at his visitor. "Sorry, I don't mean to lecture but I have a difficult point to get across which I think may be a solution to your roadside problem. Also I'd appreciate it if you would help me with a job I want to do just now."
He rummaged in his backpack, produced a small clipboard and pen which he handed to her. "All right, Amanda, what I'm going to do is call out some figures which I'd like you to write in the second column on the top sheet, one on each line starting at the top. I imagine you recognise what's written in the first column?"
Unsmiling, Amanda nodded. "Soil analysis terms - Al (uminium), Ca, Mg, K, Na, P etc, and the 3rd column has the ideal for this area. But I don't understand, you don't have any samples or chemicals or anything, how would you have any figures?"
Charles smiled and hefted the pendulum. "Let's take the first one, Al. In fact, aluminium or bauxite ore." He glanced at the plumb bob. "Is there any bauxite in the soil beneath my feet?"
The bob began to move in a circular clockwise motion at a steady speed, finally settling on a back and forward swing.
"On a scale of zero to fifty where zero is none at all, is there more than 5?" The pendulum kept swinging at the same even pace. "More than 7? More than 9? More than 10?" The bob circled clockwise until it reached a side-to-side motion. "OK, ten, that's 100 Amanda. Fine. Right, I'm not going to do it aloud, takes too long. Next one is Calcium."
The woman watched fascinated as the pendulum went through its gyrations for each of the nutrients, minerals and elements on the sheet, writing down the numbers as Charles called them out until he reached the end of the list. "Electrical conductivity - OK, seventeen, that's 170. Hold on a minute."
He flicked open a long pouch which hung from his belt, extracted two long dowsing rods and held them one in each hand pointing in front away from his body. "OK, I want you to show me an energy change." He paced forward slowly, counting aloud. As he reached 'Five', both rods swung inwards to lie next to each other against his chest. He moved them back into position. "Is this a ley line?" The left hand rod swung outwards. "No. Is it water? No. Is it in the soil? Yes. Right." He moved forward another pace, turned to face his writer.
"Will you flip the sheet, please? I'll just do the first four and EC. Al - zero . . . . . . Ca - 35, Mg - 10, K - 10, EC 30. That's zero, 350, 100, 100, 300. Got that? Good. That's a lot better, much better, no Al, no lovegrass." He repositioned the rods. "Show me an energy change." He moved forward a pace, the rods swung inwards and he pushed them out again. "Right, show me the far edge of the bauxite stream." The pace count went to 25 before the rods moved and he whistled softly. "The rods are calibrated in my paces so that's about 22 metres," he explained.
"Now where was I? Right, I remember. Do you have anything with you that has been in contact with that roadside draw?"
Amanda nodded, felt in a pocket and held out a handful of pebbles. "I like rocks," she said throatily, "pick them up all the time."
"Me, too." Taking the stones, he placed them on the 'clean' ground in a small heap. "I want you to sit opposite me, legs crossed if that's okay," Charles said, settling himself down so the pebbles were between the two of them, on his lap he placed the clipboard with a fresh sheet on top. From where she was sitting, the American could see the page had abbreviations across the top and a line of empty boxes below each marked one to fifty. "Right. Would you hold a hand out, palm upwards, please?"
As the pendulum bobbed, weaved and circled above her palm, the dowser made marks on the sheet using a pen held in his left hand; when he had finished the sequence, he put the plumb bob down, drew something on the page using his other hand and turned the clipboard around; she saw he had joined all the marks together with a single line.
"This is your energy profile or imprint," he explained. "The first column - Vi - is Vitality, the second - Ak - is similar to pH, the others are mostly the same as for soils and plants. Like fingerprints, your energyprint is unique to you; whilst there will be minor variations in some columns from time to time, values have also been recorded which will not change. As a person in tune with the earth as you are, can you see a different sort of value in that?"
"I can be identified anywhere I go?" she guessed. "No, wait, I . . my energy can be used anywhere I go! That's right, isn't it, and you're going to use it next, aren't you?"
Charles grinned at the sound of growing knowledge and triumph in her lilting accented voice. "That's exactly right. Hold your hand out again."
Spreading the pile of pebbles out, he chose two which had fragments of soil adhering to them, placed them on her palm and repeated his previous actions down to drawing the line on the sheet.
been "What I've done is calculated the energyprint of the soil on the pebbles against the standard set by your own. The reason is both you and they 'live' in the same Idaho environment and therefore have an existing relationship with each other and the soil and plants which are also part of it. You can see the line parallels your own in places, in others, specifically Ak which in this case is acidity versus alkalinity, it dips below. You remember what I said earlier about characteristics and the drive for survival? The living organism that is the soil is as keen on staying alive as everything else. In your region the soil is acidic and has been ever since conifers first grew there. Over time it has adapted by 'generating' living conditions which attract plant species that absorb sufficient acidity to enable the soil to stay alive. Now, however, it is fighting a losing battle against council-applied weedkillers which kill the plants and also cause more acidity. Unless you can stop that happening, you don't have a hope in rehabilitating the roadside."
"So how do I do that?" Amanda asked.
"Two prong approach. First, the council, next, the land. From council's perspective, controlling the roadside environment is only one of many things it has to do; weedkillers might be expensive but on the face of it they are the easiest option and they are a budgeted item in council's secure income base so no problem. Furthermore, council expenditure is good for the local - or county - economy, whether it's spent on weeds or bitumen. Every dollar expended has a multiplying 'trickle down' effect of about four point five so a thousand is effectively worth five thousand, one hundred thousand means half a million and so on. Essentially, for any alternative weed control project to get a look in, it is going to have to produce a similar effect. I doubt you could do it on Rapid Lightning Road on its own, you would need a bigger zone.
"What you would do in that zone is your next step. Quite simply, to make the roadside environment productive. Intersperse existing weeds with competitive plants beneficial to humans which grow well in the same conditions. Intercrop with plants ditto which boost those nutrients shown as lacking in the energyprint. Irrigate with runoff. That's the visible aspect; the invisible is the power we can feed in through the energyprints. I've about finished for a time, would you like to have a coffee with me? Goodo! There's a little cafe in the village down the road the way you're heading, how about I meet you at the bridge over the river in five minutes?"
roger
