Touching grass
A late lesson in the meditative qualities of yard work
I grew up in a house on two acres of land. There was plenty of lawn but in our backyard we also had a prominent patch of trees that we called the woods. As a kid it held a certain mystique to it. There was the yard, which was much mowable grass, and there were the woods.
In the woods you could wander around and feel like you’d stepped into another place, the cover of branches and foliage and a floor of downed leaves giving the imagination enough juice to send you wherever you needed to go.
But as I grew up, the woods lost their mystery. I grew taller and the trees appeared thinner. Where I used to convince myself I couldn’t see our house now it stood in plain sight. And I eventually realized that the reason I could see through the trees was because my parents had arduously made it so.
At a certain age, some of the work of housekeeping turned into a list of chores for my brothers and I, and once we could be trusted with shears, clippers, and no adult supervision— yard work was added to the growing list.
We were allotted four garbage bins of yard waste and during the summer it was our sworn duty to make sure that they were filled every week. Whether it was grass clippings or branch trimmings, we dutifully tended to our plot of land and manicured it into a nicer existence.
The invasive species of buckthorn common to Illinois became our primary enemy. With sharp thorns and a zealous growth cycle that would make most vegetation jealous, we were tasked with its impossible extinction. My brothers and I sweat and bled as we clipped, chopped, snapped, and shoved endless fiber into bins, exerting our dominance, if for a moment, over the circle of life.
Chores are line items to maintain order. And if left unchecked, disorder arises. For a yard, one can imagine an unkempt image, the unruly haircut for a plot of land whose shagginess veers into something visibly off. Something the neighbors might notice.
But as a youth, I did not get it. Why couldn’t the lawn just grow? Or why couldn’t the woods just get… Woodier? I came to understand it conceptually, but I found no value in it. To protest, when mowing the lawn, I would listen to my Walkman at ear bleeding volume just to make sure I got something out of the time spent.
At face value, chores were the obstacle that stood in the way of something better, something actually fun. And yet, when I go for a walk and smell that wafting allure of fresh cut grass, I can’t help but get pulled back to a feeling— of summer sun and summer sweat, the biome of my childhood and all that green that was at my fingertips. And maybe it’s because I am not sweating, but I have to confess that the memory no longer feels like a chore.
It could be nostalgia for youth, or a more rural lifestyle, or maybe a craving for the uncomplicated nature of a life where responsibilities were pre-tax and pre-consequence. A day so full of free time that yard work as a road bump feels like its own sort of luxury…
This revisionist thinking all arises because I was catching up on some substacks and was reading through Josh Terry’s interview with the band Hovvdy when Will Taylor, one of the band members, dropped this gem when talking about the role of yard work in his and his family’s life:
I've definitely been through some mowing years now with all these houses we've moved in and out of. My grandpa used to say, "The best way a modern man can exercise is to mow the lawn." I'm just in love with it because it's a time when we're all feeling good. No one needs a lot and everybody has their own path. You can't really mess it up because it'll grow back. It's a very low-stress, engaging task.
His words sent a strange current through me that relaltered my understanding of yard work, the bane of my youthful existence.
When I call my parents, who have retired to a mountainous portion of Arizona, the joke with my wife and brothers is that they always respond to “what have you been up to?” with “oh, just moving some rocks”. For them, work may have ceased, but yard work is a lifestyle.
And now I’ve realized that I kind of crave yard work. In a world where we move from one screen to another, I would love to have to walk back into the woods and trim the trees for an hour. Because there was something almost meditative about it.
It was both a prescription for idle hands and a sense of completion. If adult coloring books can make sense, so can moving rocks. Maybe all that matters is that you still can move a rock. Or maybe it’s nice to know you can move the rock back to another spot tomorrow. And who knows, maybe Sisyphus kind of liked pushing that rock up that hill.
But it was in Taylor’s idea that “there’s no real way to mess it up, because it’ll just grow back” that really caught me by surprise. It flipped the task of yard work on its head. That it’s not just the reptition, but the forgiveness in the attempt. Not to perfect it or finally get it right, but because the joy and meaning of it is in the doing— and if you get it wrong, that’s fine too. Go ahead and try again.
Writing is a lot of attempts to get it right. I go back over and over again, wearing out the phrase that writing is rewriting. And while there is much fulfillment in the doing, and in the getting it right finally… There is something alluring to the idea of a thing you can return to, that needs to be done— but you can’t really mess it up.
In a way, so much of adult life sometimes feels like I’m always just trying not to mess something up. That I just need to try and make as many right decisions as possible so life can be… As good as possible? So the idea of there being something you have to to do but it also regenerates should you mess it up and allow you to try again— that sounds really nice.
The idea also helped make sense why my parents would choose to move rocks every day. “No one needs a lot and everybody has their own path”. The work is individual and communal, both with each other and nature, even if I am trying to bend it to my will. And you don’t need to worry about running out of it— that nice feeling of accomplishment (or not) will grow back for you to have again. It feels like the newly hip saying, an elemental reminder to our busy selves when we need to pry ourselves away from our screens— hey, it’s time to go touch grass.
Since this reframing, I have been making it a habit to cut my walks and runs short so I can go lay down in the grass around my usual loop. And it works. In the same way that the smell of fresh cut grass brings me back to youth, the itchy but balming touch of of it is a nice reminder that while life may be a series of chores, it is possible to choose to enjoy them. Or maybe it just takes time.
Sensory Activation: Things I Was Into This Week
“Forever” , Hovvdy
The least I could do is plug Hovvdy’s new album. “Forever” was a single and I’ve always found their music to capture a certain sense of nostalgia, like hanging out with old friends in a memory you’ve made up as you drive around on a sunny day without them. Honestly, it’s a great album to put on if you’ve got some yard work to do. I wish I did.
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Love this, I see any opportunity to reframe as a gift and a positive sign I'm thinking right.