Grass.
K.L. Orion
Grass.
About three years ago now, I was a little, cringy eighth grader going into his freshman year of high school. I was a wreck of a human being. My relations with friends sucked. My relationships sucked, period. I had no intentions of being social at all. As a matter of fact, going into my first marching band season, I had no intentions of making friends with anyone. I had every intention of being that emo kid who wanted nothing to do with anybody.
Then I arrived at my first summer practice before band camp. The band teacher had us immediately do a “get to know you” activity. She had us all arrange in groups based on our favorite colors. My favorite color is green, but that felt too simple. Trying to be the stupid oddball of the group, I decided my favorite color was grass.
Yes, grass.
Not even some hyper specific shade of grass, or a species of grass with a certain color. No, when I said my favorite color was grass, I just meant grass.
Then for me, the unexpected happened.
Trying to find the group representing their favorite color, a senior walked over to me. They asked me what color I was representing. I told them the truth.
“Grass.”
They didn’t question it. They didn’t seem confused. They just smiled and hopped right in. Then more did. More people joined my little grass cult. Next thing I knew, I had a sizable group all claiming their favorite color was “grass” of all things. Even kids who long ago used to pick on me joined in on this.
The time came for the band teacher to ask every group what their favorite color was. When she came over to mine, she asked, “What color are you guys?”
One of the seniors looked her dead in the eyes with a kind of dazed smile and answered without missing a beat, “Grass.”
The confused look on her face after receiving that answer is one I’ll never forget.
Maybe that was my first sign. The first sign that maybe I belonged here in this band. Maybe I belonged somewhere for the first time in my life. I made many friends that year that I would later hangout with, learn things from, have adventures with, and then cry for when they graduated.
And maybe it was foreshadowing to the fact that I could take leadership in this band. The same time the following year, I had the title of “section leader.” One year changed my life that much. And it all started with one silly, almost stupid interaction.
“Grass.”
Last week, I was hanging out with a few friends in a field. Two of them were a couple who were head over heels for each other. They had found their own little section of the field and began flirting with each other, then began playfully roughhousing with one another. They got into tickle fights. Then, one of them began (gently) dragging the other by her arms across the ground, giggling the whole way. While she found it amusing, her clothes did not, as they were getting scraped against the turf.
Laughing at them, I jokingly made a comment along the lines of, “You better watch out for grass stains!”
Grass stains.
Stains of any kind are typically considered bad, but would my friend see these grass stains like that? Would they remind her of a happy memory?
The city of Knoxville, Iowa is locked in a debate. An old football stadium that was built in the 1930s is falling apart. It’s not the safest field. It’s not the most practical field. Some want to move to another stadium, others want to continue using this stadium. There’s yet another debate raging about renovating the stadium.
As things currently stand, the school is moving to a turf field elsewhere while business gets sorted out with this older, nostalgic stadium. The turf is more practical to the earthy, muddy, uneven field being left behind. The field whose ground gets torn up by cleats. The field that is almost impossible to march on as a band member. The field whose paint keeps wearing away.
Yet I have to admit, there’s something charming about a grass field. I don’t know what it is, but there’s something charming about it.
I’ve become the main lawnmower in my family. I’m the one who usually takes the machine out and cuts our yard down to a civilized height (with help from my family of course). Usually I don’t mind it. But sometimes, while I’m cutting away at the grass, I see bugs fleeing from the blades of my vegetation slayer, and I stop to think about whether or not I’m doing the right thing. Sure, it’s city code that the lawn vegetation has to be a certain height, but does that make it right?
So many bugs and other invertebrates find refuge in the grass. It’s their own little forest. Spiders, ants, snails, crickets, and the fittingly named grasshoppers. Earthworms use the grass to shade themselves from the sun’s burning rays after a rainstorm.
Speaking of rainstorms…
There’s always something interesting about the shade of the grass after a storm. I’m not sure if anyone else notices, but I do.
Taking a walk through a prairie trail, I noticed numerous birds. Birds, believe or not, are literally a type of dinosaur. When the dinosaur family ruled supreme, grass wasn’t that common. In fact, it didn’t exist for most of their reign. It evolved at the tail end of the Mesozoic Era, maybe because of the giant dinosaurs constantly tromping around and consuming large quantities of plants. There needed to be a resilient plant that could get stepped on and grow back quickly.
Either way, the giant dinosaurs are gone, but the birds and the grass remain. And it wasn’t until a red-winged blackbird shot out from the prairie grass trying to avoid me that I thought about how dependent these birds are on grass. Some, like ground fowl and, well, this red-winged blackbird find refuge in it like the insects. Some use the straw to line their nests.
The birdsong mixed with the wind blowing through the grass also made for a magical symphony.
Grass.
The cornerstone of the prairie ecosystem.
Iowa used to be mainly prairie. Grasses fed off of the highly nutrient rich soil of my state. Many grasses had roots that sunk deep into the Earth, holding that nutritious soil together, preserving it. Holding that nutrients in for other plants.
Those prairies stretched out for miles.
Grass.
Grass as far as the eye can see.
Grass feeds so many different kinds of animals. From providing snacks for the smallest rabbit to supplying a feast for the largest elephant, all sorts of animals are dependent on grass. And all sorts of other animals are dependent on those animals.
Grass provides food for many animals we’re dependent on. Goats, sheep, horses, and cows. Around here, before there were domestic cows, there were bison. Grass fed the mighty bison. The mighty bison fed the wolves and cougars. The mighty bison fed the Indigenous People of the prairie.
The Mississippian Culture was a mound building culture of North America. They would work to move thousands upon thousands of tons of dirt to construct these colossal earthworks. Now, their society is gone. The skeleton of their civilization, their earthen pyramids, is covered in grass.
The Mississippians were dependent on corn. So were the Ancestral Pueblo. So were the Mayans. So were the Aztecs. So were the Incas. Corn, or maize, is a kind of grass they selectively bred. Now my state’s economy is dependent on that same crop.
Wheat supplied food for many societies in Europe and the Middle East. The people there made it into bread. Bread became an important food. Food itself is important. Bread helped shape the European world.
Many Asian cultures used rice, another type of grass. Rice would supply them with equally important food. It would become their grain. Billions of people across the world now, especially in Asia, are dependent on rice for food.
Bamboo, a giant form of grass, is also an important resource for many cultures who use it to build structures and craft tools. And of course, charismatic pandas need this strange grass to survive.
Grass is, in many ways, an important basis for civilization, but it’s also fascinating how it defies civilization. In the cracks of our concrete, this resilient little plant grows in defiance. In the cracks of our civilized world, this tiny green life form prospers in our mistakes.
Like the Mississippians before us, I have no doubt that when our civilization falls, when our society crumbles, we will be consumed by grass. When humanity dies and withers away, when thousands of years of advancement collapses, the first sign will be the grass becoming entirely untamed.
For there will be no second-guessing teenagers around anymore to mow it down.
Our buildings will crumble and return to the Earth. Our vehicles will fall apart and rust away. Our roads will break and crack, and in those cracks, grass will thrive. In the first days of our absence, the grass will be the first thing to spring up without us.
Grass represents the condition of the Earth sometimes. At least it does to me. It’s like its lifeblood, or maybe more accurately its expression. When we don’t get rain for a while, it takes a while for most things to show the signs of a drought. However, the grass almost immediately expresses its pain. It wilts. It doesn’t grow. It turns yellow.
But when it gets water, it transforms almost instantly. It becomes green and luscious. It shoots up and grows. It changes the landscape entirely.
Grass.
A cornerstone for so much life.
Grass.
I started thinking about grass today.
I don’t know why.
I know when.
I was listening to a sermon. A sermon on Memorial Day Weekend. A sermon about the very nature of life and death. A sermon about God’s purpose for us human beings. A sermon about the purpose of human life and human souls.
And during this very important, philosophical message, I caught myself thinking about grass of all things.
It’s such a trivial thing. It’s extremely simplistic.
It’s just grass.
Just grass…
I’m just human.
You’re just a human.
We’re just living in the world.
I don’t know if there’s a takeaway from this post.
I think there is.
But I can’t tell you what it is.
I think it will be different for everybody. Maybe you’ve thought of something reading through it that gives you a different take on things. Maybe you’ve realized listening to me is a huge waste of time.
I’m not sure.
This world is full of injustice. It’s full of hate. It’s full of war. Greed. Violence. Oppression. Friends and family are experiencing their own challenges and even oppression while I write this.
Yet, for whatever reason, I felt that it was important to talk about grass today.
Maybe that’s the takeaway.
Some people stop to smell the roses.
I stop to ponder the grass.
I love your writing style K.L. I like that you take the simplest to show its complexity. I am finding that your writing is like a good TV show ... I absolutely and anxiously await your next episode.
I am a collector of quotes. Here are a couple of your gems in this post:
"Grass represents the condition of the Earth sometimes. At least it does to me. It’s like its lifeblood, or maybe more accurately its expression. When we don’t get rain for a while, it takes a while for most things to show the signs of a drought. However, the grass almost immediately expresses its pain. It wilts. It doesn’t grow. It turns yellow. But when it gets water, it transforms almost instantly. It becomes green and luscious. It shoots up and grows. It changes the landscape entirely. "
"But sometimes, while I’m cutting away at the grass, I see bugs fleeing from the blades of my vegetation slayer"
"Our buildings will crumble and return to the Earth. Our vehicles will fall apart and rust away. Our roads will break and crack, and in those cracks, grass will thrive. In the first days of our absence, the grass will be the first thing to spring up without us."
"Some people stop to smell the roses. I stop to ponder the grass."
excellent multifaceted post that maintains the important theme: grass.