Early morning solitary walks produce a sort of induced reverie. After all, there is little mental effort involved in putting one foot in front of another, other than that required to avoid holes or stones or to keep to your path. So the mind is free to become absorbed by external sights or internal musings. Sometimes the two intersect.
Such was the case yesterday morning. My first impression upon leaving the house was how good our fields look when freshly mowed. Yesterday was one of those rare days when all of the fields had been mowed within the previous 48 hours. Of course, this state of good grooming only ever lasts for a moment, since all grasses grow quickly in the late spring and some grow more quickly than others. Already the marsh grasses in the lower pasture are reasserting themselves, and the odd sprig of pasture grass still stands tall where a mower hiccupped at a turning or a driver failed to keep to his or her line due, no doubt, to a surfeit of day dreams.
The sight of our fields caused me to realize that most of our neighbors’ fields are also kept well-groomed or well-cropped. This realization made me wonder why humanity is so captivated by the sight of a well-mown field or yard. As a species, we spend an inordinate amount of time mowing grass, absorbed in an activity that produces little that we deem useful. Clippings are considered waste to the majority of us; we who are well-off shudder at the thought of the less well-off having to eat clippings to sustain life. And the good clean smell of freshly cut grass – as heady a perfume as it may be – cannot, by itself, account for all of the energy we expend on the pastime.
Aesthetics can only be part of the answer. It is true that a cleared, grassy field can serve as a frame for a tableau, whether one created or abetted by man or produced solely by nature. At various times, our fields have been home to horses, alpacas, cows, deer, small mammals, birds, and insects. While the horses, alpacas, and cows have long gone away, the deer and birds visit our fields as and when they like and only the small mammals and insects are permanent residents. I am often distracted by field mice running from the tractor for shelter as I mow, and am frequently amused by swallows flying in front and in back of the tractor in seeming symbiosis to feed upon the resident insects rising at the tractor’s threatening vibrations.
There is one point in our daily walk where we may look back down the lane toward our house across open fields. Here, distance is open to the hills framing the far side of the river’s valley. The result is a multi-faceted, three-dimensional diorama demonstrating nature’s intersection with farming life. Yesterday, I stopped there for a moment to enjoy the view and to catch my breath after having made the long, slow slog down the two lanes lying adjacent to a 90 acre parcel presently under reclamation by blackberries, brambles, bushes, and forest. As I did so, I found myself gripped by the contrast between the emotions produced in me by the 90 acre parcel and those produced by the open vista. I decided that this contrast might well prove to contain an answer to the riddle of a well-mown field’s allure.
The 90 acre parcel is densely covered in all manner of untamed vegetation, and tall, wild, flowering grasses grow abundantly along the entire edge where it meets both lanes. The acreage within is a mystery. It was once known and farmed. The roof and wall of a ruined home where a farmer once lived can be seen on top of a hill through the trees and brush – if one knows precisely where to stand and in which direction to look. The road to the home is no longer used and took a meandering, unlikely path to begin with, so the ruin seems to lurk within the vegetation as if a wizard’s former lair. The fields once assiduously maintained by the long-departed farmer are no more, lost now to nature’s ongoing reclamation plan. When you look into this acreage, you must peer; when you sense movement or hear sound emanating from within, you must often use your imagination as to its source. Hence, its mystery.
By contrast, the view from atop the lane across the well-tended fields is evidence of man’s ability to exercise at least a modicum of control over nature’s instinctive clutter and mystery. The distance between the vista and the acreage is only capable of being measured by the amount of force necessarily employed by a tractor, two good horses, or man, himself, pulling a plow by hand through the prairie sod as each grooms the land. For we must always be at work defending the well-mown field if it is to persevere, if it isn’t to revert to the state of the 90 acre parcel. And therein lies its allure: it is simultaneously proof of man’s partial mastery of the elements and a paean to the incredible amount of effort expended in doing so. While satisfying for its aesthetics, the open vista at the top of the lane is all the more powerful because it speaks of our dedication, because it speaks to our ego.
But if we listen carefully, the open vista should also serve as a tocsin. The extent of our control over the elements is infinitesimal in comparison to the totality of energy contained in the universe, and if all of that energy were ever to be organized against us – if the wizard of the ruined house ever bothered to reassert himself and reassemble all of the mysteries of his art – we would be overwhelmed in a matter of moments. So we ought to take good care in our efforts to acknowledge always the difference between a good grooming and an attempt to impose an order perceived by mankind as opposed to the one demanded by nature. Mankind is, after all, only a single ingredient in the soup that is nature, and we would do well to bear in mind Aristotle’s admonition that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
