Thorny Lessons From El Monte
By Angela Sucich
Angela Sucich is a contributor to Rooted 2: the Best New Arboreal Nonfiction.
My four-year-old daughter sends me to find sticks for her to build a fairy house, which, soon overrun by frantic, tiny ants that swirl below our feet, she decides is now an ant house. It is no easy task, acquiring sticks. Not for the lack of trees—there are many, scarecrowed together, filling the woods of Abuela's property with spindly, sparsely-leafed arms. But almost everything is poky—thorned, prickled, spined. The sticks are poky, too: wind-blown, tumbled branches of mistol, algarrobo, mesquite, chañar. Tree-limb remnants littering the ground like graveyard bones. Or the playthings of overindulged dogs.
My mother-in-law's property sprawls just outside San Marcos Sierras, a place that calls itself a "hippie" town, tucked among the low hills and flatlands of Córdoba Province, Argentina. Here, gauchos still trace the trickling river tributaries looking for lost horses and wayward livestock. They don their guardamontes, oversized cowhide chaps that protect their legs and their horse’s sides from the cutting brush, the endless thorns. Her place contains one of the few remaining uninterrupted wildernesses within the town limits. What they call monte—wild forest. It has its own drought-resistant beauty. Scrub brush clustered with bigger trees. Stands of álamos (poplars). Here and there, buttressed moras, their wide roots overflowing the earth. A forest bristling with spikes, and in the summer heat of December, buzzing with chicharras (cicadas).
The impressive thorns of the local trees, not to mention the massive cacti, are not the monte’s only defining trait, but it's impossible not to dwell on them. You can't walk barefoot around my mother-in-law’s house. Only hobbit feet could withstand the tiny spears strewn across the ground, hidden in plain sight. At first I thought it an aggressive land, this region of rural Argentina. Everywhere, the terrain brandishes its weapons. My mother-in-law uses them for her own ends, framing garden beds with branches and brambles to keep out unwanted guests. She reminds me that some thorns exist for more than making herbivores think twice about chomping the vegetation. Sometimes they are there to catch or conjure water in an arid land.
Certain thorns on cacti are modified leaves. A technology of spines collecting dew, condensing water from foggy air, directing precious droplets to their roots. They also help cacti and succulents reduce air flow and evaporation around the plant, allowing them to retain water. Spines can even create tiny bits of shade (the best, I imagine, that vestiges of leaves can do).
Thorns on trees strike me differently. Maybe it's the scale—witnessing a living thing larger than me, its thorns positioned like minuscule knives above my head. They teach me to look up, to look again. To move with respect for the tree’s boundaries. To remember what the mechanical defense is for—safeguarding leaves and fragile stems so a tree can live and reproduce, grow flowers. On algarrobo, mistol, and chañar trees, flowers become carob, coffee, and throat medicine, sweet as molasses. Michael Pollan has written about the coevolution of plants and animals (including humans) in The Botany of Desire and other works. I think of that now, how trees, which predate humans by millions of years, condition us to value them, their offerings, their shade. Reciprocity is built into nature, into ecosystems. Into the give and take—but not too much. Maybe that’s also what the thorns are for.
As I walk along a path lined with small rocks, ducking under thin, feathery foliage, I think about stories and folktales that hinge on well-placed thorns. Ones that have something to say about protection and vulnerability, risk and reciprocity. Like the classical tale of Androcles and the lion, featuring the proverbial thorn withdrawn from the predator’s paw, a kindness the lion later repays. A reprieve in a world of hunters and prey. As Joseph Campbell tells us in The Power of Myth: "Life consists in eating other creatures." And yet there is cooperation amid competition. We are the lion's tooth, the thorn in its paw, the slave’s pity, the lion’s mercy.
I recall, too, the Grimm brothers' story of Briar Rose, their version of the Sleeping Beauty tale. How she’s hidden by a spikey, overgrown hedge, awaiting a prince to walk through and transform its thorns into flowers. I won't get into my thoughts about maidens and agency, pricked fingers on spindles, heroes and patriarchy. I’ll only mention how the plot is driven by a bristly, disgruntled, uninvited guest (fairy or wise woman, depending on the variant) armed with curses and thorns. Another reminder that we are never far from danger, from our weapons and defenses. Of course, my daughter loves the old Disney movie. There are fairies in it, you see.
Thorns seem to be uncomplicated symbols, though not monolithic ones. On one side, they are the pricks and pains we must bear in life. The injuries and the insights that arise from them. On the other, they are protection, safety. Go ask the rose what it thinks of its thorns. Or simply appreciate the sharpness that accompanies beauty. As I look on my daughter's fairy house, erected with scavenged sticks and branches lovingly placed, and take in her beaming face, I can't help but think what a delightful home it all makes. And the ants don't even seem to mind that it's a little poky.
Angela Sucich holds a PhD in Medieval Literature. Her poetry chapbook, Illuminated Creatures (Finishing Line Press) won the 2022 New Women’s Voices Chapbook Competition and other recognitions. She was honorably mentioned for the 2021 Pablo Neruda Prize and the 2020 Francine Ringold Award. Her poetry and prose have appeared in such journals as Nimrod, MER, SWWIM, The Common, and Whale Road Review, and in the anthologies From the Waist Down: The Body in Healthcare (Papeachu Press) and Rooted2: The Best New Arboreal Nonfiction (Outpost19). Visit her at angelasucich.com