ROYALTON – Hot day, full heat of summer. The river beckons, babbling around the bends, churning between stones.
Rather than nose-dive down the steep bank, I choose the simpler footpath. Spring has been wet enough to keep gardeners happy, vegetation robustly green. Which is why the brown really stood out. The surrounding wall of deep green was broken, fractured by a corridor of brown. The footpath, yes, but why is the poison ivy shriveled, nearby oak saplings splattered as if with tan paint, graceful mare’s tail plants blackened in place? This was no foot traffic effect. This was deliberate death, and the question lingered: Why? Who sprays trails along the White River? To what end?
I have seen the U.S. Forest Service treatment site addressing Japanese knotweed further upriver. Herbicided in 2025, much of the land remains brown, dead, nearly a year later. Perhaps the correct term is inert, in more scientific language. Whatever the chemical formulation was, it certainly continues to have impacts.
I’ve seen The Browning before: a daycare, around mailboxes buried in multiflora rose, and beneath culvert pipes. But now along the rivers too, for hundreds of feet?
Sure I have photos, but they never seem to alter policy or awaken us to the vitality of clean, drinkable water. What truly is the purpose of spraying, when literally any justification will do? Habitat improvement, sight lines, convenience? No signage, so no way to know.
To be clear, this was not professional work. It was sloppy, and frankly ineffective. Is this the culture we’ve created? Is this how we “love” our forest and river landscapes? Is this Vermont’s version of stewardship that I hear about so cheerfully, consistently, righteously?
We may not teach such ethically irresponsible approaches in workshops and universities, but we own this. The hypocrisy of purpose is learned from the videos and books glorifying the search and destroy approach to “invasive” plants. Are there any limits, any boundaries, in our ongoing campaign against nature?
The concept of citizens armed with poisons calling upon personal judgment to determine life and death is just dismal. The bird people should be outraged; native poison ivy berries are a tremendous, nutritious bird food. Japanese knotweed can be managed, successfully, without rendering long swathes of riverbank lifeless and inert. I cut short my visit to the river; an odd emptiness had settled over the place.
Michael Bald is the owner and founder of “Got Weeds?,” operating since 2010 out of Royalton. He will be speaking at the Greensboro Conservation Commission public forum on invasives. Wednesday, July 8, 5 p.m., in Fellowship Hall at the Greensboro United Church of Christ.
