Page 119 - ECOlogic Book

ways to have gone off the rails, we each continue to contribute to
environmental problems even when we know better. The subtle pressure to
conform impacts each of us, as I found when I spent a year with my
daughter, in her new house in the central New Jersey countryside. I’d gone
there to be company for Jan following the sudden death of her husband from

a heart attack, and to give myself some time for writing. The new house sits
in the middle of four treeless acres.

Out of deference to her late husband’s wishes, all four acres had been
devoted to lawn, a decision that I found ecologically repugnant. My
repugnance intensified when the new mowing tractor arrived. I watched the
tractor lesson, all the while thinking, “You won’t catch me on that thing! No
possible way!”

The mower epitomized all that I’d been moving against in my latter-day
environmental awareness. The grit, the industrial macho of it, the
wastefulness of it - all this gas, a non-renewable resource, kicking all this
CO2 into the atmosphere, bringing on global warming - and all this terrible
noise. None of it made any sense to me.

However, obeying my self-imposed rule for our cohabitation, I said nothing.
I watched Jan drive the monster around the property, slaloming in and out

around the dogs’ Invisible Fence flags; saw the swath she cut through the
brown-eyed Susans that were just beginning to get a foothold, and thought,
“OK, baby, if this is how you want to spend your Saturdays, be my guest.”
My way was clear. I would have nothing to do with this abomination called a
lawn, and eventually she’d catch on, decide that there are better things to
do with her time, and let the lawn go back to meadow.

But it didn’t happen that way. Once, twice, maybe, in weak moments, I said
I’d help with the mowing - just a little bit. “Just the back part. All the rest is

yours. And no way will I back that monster down the so-called ‘ramp’ (two
flimsy aluminum tracks that have to be positioned each time) to get it out of
the shed.”

The Machine from Hell
The first time, I thought I was driving the machine from hell. “What is a 64
year old woman doing bouncing around on this heaving, roaring inferno of

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