Fresh Cut Grass

I read a while back that the scent of cut grass, that crisp green summery smell, was in fact blades of grass calling out to each other. The blades warning those around it of what was to come so they don’t fall to the same fate. How morbid to think that in that blade’s dying breath all it could think was “save yourself.” A yard freshly cut turns your bare feet green, a result of the onslaught and murder the blood of thousands, but a nice even lawn for us humans. Who invented lawns anyway?

               It feels almost selfish to think that humans are at the top of the ecological food chain. That we domesticate grass and other plants just to cut them down for our entertainment. Then there are those that very much do not belong to us – the Rainforest perhaps – that humans have claimed and subsequently destroyed. This feels like a lonely existence, that humans are wiping out and causing everything to go extinct because we believe we own the land. There is so much life around us to be ignoring it.

               Paul Kingsnorth mentioned several authors that are good examples of making the land into characters, but my mind kept thinking of one author that was unmentioned: J.R.R Tolkien. Particularly his ents. Remember that scene where Pippin and Merry were in Treebeard’s arms for hours while the forest communed and ultimately decided nothing was to be done? That is what I imagine is happening with the world right now. Until our world walks out of the forest and sees the wreckage that humans have caused, they might still hold a backseat. I for one am okay with trees rising up and fighting back and maybe take down a wood chipper or two.

Happy blogging, ribbit ribbit.