Playing in the Mud

When it comes to landscaping and lawn maintenance, most people prefer a mowed lawn and a flower-bed reclaimed on behalf of civilization.

I guess I see their point.

I wonder, though, at our incessant need to tame the flora around us. Do you remember when you were a kid? The most fun places were overgrown, not manicured. You would play hide-and-seek and search out a patch of tall grass to lie down in (they never found you that way).

As adults, our primary focus has shifted from play to work. And so the tall grass no longer fits into our cosmos. We aim for perfection, and we define it as things we can control. So out comes the lawnmower to rid us of our purple wildflowers and dandelion seeds. We trade in our wilderness for an image.

Today I conquered the flower-beds. They were a disgusting mass of vines, weeds, bugs, decomposing leaves, and (I'm afraid) one very disgusting earthworm, which I managed to stealthily avoid. Over the course of the morning, I was pelted by a rock (thank you, lawnmower), scratched, bitten, and progressively covered in mud.

The feeling at the end was tremendous: a greater accomplishment, in many ways, than any of my schoolwork or work-work this semester, because it was real; it was tangible; it actually created a benefit that I could see and touch.

That "accomplishment" of the task should have been rewarding. And yet, inevitably, the only part I truly found joy in was being knuckle-deep in the mud. Playing, once more, as though I were still a little girl.