Xeriscape Base

   Xeriscape: A trademark used for a landscaping method that employs drought-resistant plants in an effort to conserve resources, especially water.

   A year ago, there was no running water on my base. It was just a pile of dirt and debris, with a few old buildings here and there. Some of the buildings may have been nice once upon a time. I hear they used to be part of an agricultural college. But now they are nothing more than dirty, sand-bag covered husks which we try to make feel like a home. When the Engineers dug the place in, they pulled up the bones of many bodies buried during the Saddam era and before. The topology of this base is a perfect xeriscape.

   There are not many trees here. The horizon in all directions is a brown smudge where sky meets the curvature of the earth. At a base not far away, it is quite lush and green all around. But we live in a true dust bowl here, with nothing more than a few palm trees and weeds fighting for the water below the surface.    

   Photosynthesis has slowed to a crawl, evolution is taking a break in the shade, and the palm trees are all in a state of shock.

      Driving around on the roads creates a lot of dust. Thus, we have a dust-abatement program, as you might find in a small town in rural

Kansas. Decent water is a scarce resource, so you don’t see trucks spraying water on the roads very often. But you do see them occasionally.

   One answer to dust is gravel. Cover as much dirt as you can with gravel and you reduce the dust. We’re not just talking about a little dust here- we’re talking brown stuff, the consistency of talcum powder, all over everything.

   Some genius who preceded us had a grand idea. He decided to use all the oil they collected from oil changes in vehicles for dust abatement. They sprayed it all over. We are close to the confluence of two rivers (though we can’t use that water), so the water table is not far below the surface and the ground tends to get a little moist anyway. Now, not only is the ground wet and quick to turn muddy, it’s also saturated with petroleum products. This makes for very sticky and persistent mud, I can assure you.

   As you walk, rocks and mud cling to your boots and you grow a few inches taller until you can get to some wood or concrete or a grated surface to scrape the mud off. But of course you never get it all off, so it ends up in your office, in your hooch, in the gym, and in the chow hall.

   In the morning, there is oil-based black mud everywhere. As the sun heats up the ground, it’s dry and dusty once again. I’ve always associated the word dust with the word detritus, which Merriam-Webster defines as “a product of disintegration, destruction, or wearing away.”

    As we walk across this ancient land as soldiers, the detritus of temples long before fallen and the dust of cultures long ago extinct clings to the soles of our boots. It’s symbolic that in some form or another - through the grinding of stones by the elements, the upheaval of the earth by man's weapons, and the powerful erosion wind and rain inflict on a desert - that the dust of the ages is still our dust.    

   Death and life recycle. When our bullets sink into the earth, they become a piece of that detritus, a relic that thousands of years from now some child will pull from the ground and hold up to the sun and then carry around in his pocket.

    As our blood and the blood of our enemy seeps into the soil, we make a communion with some of the richest history in the realm of mankind. Our footsteps kick up the dust of old, our weapons disturb the ghosts of ancient tombs, and our blood beomes piece and parcel of this land. 

   Long after American forces have departed, we will be embodied in the heart and soul of this frightening and awe-inspiring place. Our blood will dry and become “a product of disintegration, destruction, or wearing away,” as the cycle of life continues, and time marches on, and the people of

Iraq begin to pen their own modern history books.

  I wonder if the minds that read about us in those books will fill with resentment or appreciation at the dust we left behind.

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