Chapter 3: EXPRESSION OF THE AUTHENTIC SELF
“My next slide is a photograph of Acacia mearnsii, the Australian black wattle. This tree was originally brought into South Africa in 1864 for shade, fuel, windbreaks and later to provide tannins for use in the leather tanning industry. The black wattle is one of the most widespread invasive alien trees in South Africa. It outcompetes indigenous plants for nitrogen, water and organic materials and significantly reduces catchment water. Black wattle is estimated to have invaded over 2.5 million hectares in South Africa. The species forms very dense stands of evergreen trees and frequently replaces seasonally dormant grasslands and fynbos.”
I was listening to an extremely informative talk on the indigenous and invader plants species of the Garden Route region, presented by retired botanist, Dr Benjamin Leigh. As the weeks passed and I accumulated more and more stories about appearances of the Green Lady and other supernatural happenings in the Knysna forest, I began to feel that I should educate myself about the plants of the area. Hence my attendance of this presentation. Dr Leigh had worked for over forty years in the South African Department of Water Affairs and Forestry and was recognized as a leading expert on South Africa’s forests and fynbos biome. He had retired to Knysna five years earlier, but continued to share his extensive knowledge by presenting a monthly talk on some aspect of the region’s indigenous plant species at a local community centre. Tonight’s presentation focused on the management of invasive alien vegetation, apparently one of Dr Leigh’s abiding passions.
After the talk, I helped myself to a cup of tea and approached Dr Leigh, who was surrounded by a group of people demanding his attention. When an opportunity finally arose to ask my question, I feared that Dr Leigh, as a man of science, would dismiss it out of hand. But I decided to ask it anyway, as my experiences in gathering the material required for my book had begun to inure me to the potential shame of being considered a flake!
“Dr Leigh, my name is Peter Allen. I’m a journalist and I’m writing a book on the many encounters with supernatural beings in the forests of this area. Have you ever personally encountered any such beings, specifically a Green Lady, during your work in the forest?” I took a deep breath and braced myself, fully expecting Dr Leigh to either disregard both my question and myself, or else to ridicule me for my gullibility. He remained silent for a few seconds, frowning as he regarded me with an intense blue stare from beneath bushy, grey eyebrows.
Then, apparently having reached a decision, he handed me a business card, saying as he did so, “Give me a call tomorrow and we’ll set up a time to meet,” and then he turned to answer a question about invasive alien management strategies from the woman to his right.
Two days later I met up with Dr Leigh, who insisted that I call him Ben, and his gentle and softly-spoken wife, Belinda, at their home on a two-hectare smallholding with magnificent views over hectares of fynbos, with indigenous-forested gorges and the Outeniqua Mountains in the distance. Ben told me that Belinda’s retirement occupations included needlework and watercolour painting, but that he became restless if he sat around too much. So, he spent his time on his greatest passion, namely, invasive alien vegetation management. Ben was engaged in his own personal titanic battle with the black wattle, in which each tree he removed was counted as a personal victory. He was very aware that black wattle eradication in South Africa would never be achieved, or at least not during his lifetime. But he could (and did) keep his own land clear, as well as the surrounding areas that could be viewed from the large porch at the front of his wooden home, which was built on poles in order to maximally benefit from the view. Indeed, as I stood on Ben’s porch, looking out at the view of mountains, fynbos and indigenous forest, there were very few black wattles to be seen, and those only on his neighbours’ properties. Ben’s bête noir was the fact that there was very little he could do to compel his neighbours to clear their own land of invasive aliens. “And they’re contaminating the water courses with wattle seeds, which get carried downstream to re-infest previously-cleared land!” he fumed. This was definitely a very passionate man on a mission!
“So, you wanted to talk about the Lady,” Ben said, once he had collected himself and we were seated inside, enjoying a cup of coffee and some home-made cookies.
“Have you seen her?” I asked, elated that Ben was willing to so directly approach the topic. I had expected to have to gradually sidle up to the subject so as not to alienate my host.
“I have indeed, young man. In fact, I would go so far as to say that she’s the reason that I’m still alive today!” Intrigued, I leaned in so as not to miss a single word of Ben’s story…
***
Ben had purchased his smallholding, which had been absolutely choked with wattle and other alien species, using a portion of his pension payout. Whilst their home was being built, he began his work of clearing invasive alien vegetation off his land. Ben informed me that one does not clear black wattle only once. “The buggers drop kilograms of seed and so, even when you have chopped down the original large trees, properly applying stump treatment to prevent re-growth and coppicing and pulled up the saplings and seedlings, you are left with a massive seed bank, which continues to germinate over the next few years. So, each portion of cleared land must be revisited, year after year, to hand pull thousands-upon-thousands of seedlings. Fortunately, as the indigenous vegetation returns, it begins to exert its own control over the black wattle and, eventually, after revisiting a parcel of land three or four times, there are virtually no wattles left. This is really a labour of love and absolutely back-breaking work, but what a pleasure it is to see the diversity of indigenous grasses, flowers, bushes and, eventually, trees, returning to what once was practically a monoculture of black wattle. Of course, there are plenty of other alien species as well: Australian Black Wood, Rooikrans, Port Jackson, Hakea, Eucalypts, Bugweed… oh, so many, many more!” As Ben spoke, I could clearly witness his passion and love for the land and it made me feel as if the world was a slightly better and kinder place because he was out there every day, gifting his time and energy to the forest.
Ben not only cleared his own land, but also the government-owned land between his smallholding and the start of the indigenous forest. As Ben put it, “Belinda and I were the ones most affected by the alien vegetation on the land adjoining mine and, having worked in government for all those years, I was very aware of the budgetary, time and manpower constraints. I guess I just wanted to do my bit and continue to feel useful whilst on pension. Of course, it helps to keep me in shape, not to mention, out of Belinda’s hair!”
One warm, early spring morning, Ben was once more hard at work with his trusty bowsaw, cutting down adolescent wattles on a piece of land about a kilometre from his home. As he pushed through dense, shoulder-high fynbos, he heard a sound which provoked blood curdling terror in the most ancient part of his brain. It was a loud, continuous, hissing sound, which Ben knew meant one thing only – puffadder! The puffadder is a highly venomous, extremely aggressive snake, responsible for most snakebite fatalities in Africa. Ben stopped dead in his tracks and anxiously looked around, his heart pounding in his ears. There it was! Less than a meter ahead of him was the furiously puffing snake, its thick, heavy, brown-banded body coiled on the ground and its flattened, triangular head lifted in an S-shape, ready to strike. Ben was aware that the puffadder will strike suddenly, at high speed and with great force. He also knew that just one hundred milligrams of cytotoxic puffadder venom can kill an adult human male within a day. He remained frozen to the spot, keeping the furious, hissing snake in his view and hoping for a miracle.
Just then, Ben heard a rustling sound to his left and, keeping one eye on the snake, he quickly glanced up, only to have his poor thumping heart dealt yet another shock. A beautiful, naked Green Lady wrapped in her own dark-green hair, was standing, just a couple of metres away to his left. Ben wondered whether he was experiencing a stress-induced hallucination or even whether he was having a stroke, but then the Lady held up her hand, palm forward towards Ben, clearly indicating that he should remain where he was, and she turned towards the snake. She made a few puffing exhalations through her open mouth and the snake immediately lowered its head, uncoiled and silently vanished through the undergrowth.
Still not moving his body, Ben turned his head towards the Lady, wondering as he did so whether the threat of the snake had been replaced by an even greater threat. “Th.. tha… thank you!” he stammered and her answering smile reassured him that she represented no immediate danger to him. Then Ben became aware of words spoken by the Lady, directly into his mind, as she gazed intently at him with her shining, emerald-green eyes.
“Ben, you are a friend of the forest. You give of your own time and energy in an attempt to bring about greater balance, harmony and health. You redress some of the evils committed by others of your species and so you will never be harmed in this place. You are under my own personal protection.”
Ben answered simply and honestly, “I love this place; it feeds my soul.”
A warm, gentle smile illuminating her face, the Lady responded, “And that love, my dear friend, and your positive intentions, though you may not understand at present, are a far greater gift to the forest than thousands of hours spent doing battle with the black wattle.”
“But, I don’t understand! Does that mean that I should stop trying to manage invasive, alien vegetation then?” asked Ben, feeling somewhat bewildered.
“No, by all means, continue doing the excellent work that you do. It is an expression of your most authentic self and also the way in which you evolve your consciousness. It’s all about perspective, you see. A human being has a perspective of a few, short years only. Even those humans with the greatest vision think, at most, only a couple of hundred years ahead. But, for the forest, the perspective is one of hundreds of thousands, even millions, of years. And, from that perspective, invasive species come and go. Natural predators of invaders will arise and become extinct. In fact, humans are merely one of many species that will eventually, and perhaps sooner than they anticipate, become extinct, and again the forest will re-grow and come to dominate the planet, only to die back again as the climate changes and then re-grow a few hundred thousand years later. Cycles within cycles of life. So, you see, your efforts change the world only for a very short time and only for yourself and perhaps a few others. But your loving intent… well, this changes absolutely everything! Love evolves the consciousness of the All.”
Ben was still trying to absorb what the Lady had told him when she winked at him, smiled again and faded away before his very eyes. He was left feeling completely bewildered and rather shaken up and unsure of himself. The experience would, over the following months, cause Ben to question much of what he had previously taken for granted. But, after intense contemplation, Ben gradually started to understand the message the forest had given him.
“You see, Peter,” he said, his fierce intellect shining through his warm, wise blue gaze, “It’s about finding balance and harmony within ourselves. We accomplish this by continually seeking, honouring and expressing our most authentic selves, which is, by the way, the highest purpose we can hope to strive for in this world. In my case, currently the most authentic expression of myself is the active management of alien vegetation, but in your case it might be the growing of vegetables, the painting of a picture, the running of a business, or even, possibly, the writing of a book,” he winked at me. “Our most authentic expression of self also changes over the years as we become more-and-more of who we truly are and less-and-less of what others want and expect us to be. By expressing our most authentic selves, we restore harmony and balance within ourselves, which creates the closest experience of heaven on Earth that we can have in this limited human form. Of course, our authentic expressions are also the greatest expression of Love that we have to offer to the world. So, for me, right now, chopping down wattles becomes the most loving gift I can bring to myself and therefore to the great unity of which we are all a part.”
***
I left Ben’s home imbued with a profound sense of peace and joy. It appeared that even my second-hand encounters with the Lady were leaving an indelible impression upon me. I only wished that I might meet this mysterious Lady of the forest for myself.