HEPE. Helichrysum petiolare. A strangely soft, flimsy plant that requires extreme smushing to access the roots (which are also surprisingly flimsy given the mass of the vegetation they support). It grows tendril-like over anything in its path (including up through the canopy of small trees) and suffocates everything under them, leaving large spaces of nothingness when it’s removed. It’s also weirdly dusty, which leads us into the question of the week: Are we sneezing because of the HEPE or Charlotte’s Illness?

Anyway, the end of August involved a lot of HEPE work in Tennessee and Gerbode Valleys, except we got stuck in a drain in Gerbode and for all we knew we would be there forever.