Natural History

When I was a child, I loved grass.

No. Not that kind of grass.

The grass that grows in pastures and lawns and little clearings in the woods.

The stuff cows and horses eat.

If you ever get a good look at a leaf of grass– it matters not which species– you can see that each one is a bit different.

And there are definite bands of growth on the leaves. Usually a grass leaf has an initial sprouting in the early spring.  Then it expands again in the middle of summer.

The effect of this sort of growth gives it the appearance of it having a kind of “tail.”

And my childhood imagination very easily that leaf of grass into an animal.

I have been a lifelong connoisseur of wildlife documentaries.

My heroes as a child were Marty Stouffer, Sir David Attenborough, and George Page (whose deep voice used to narrate all episodes of PBS’s Nature).

I idolized these shows and their presenters.

I wished for nothing more than to be like them, and it wasn’t long before I began to create my own nature documentaries in my mind using blades of grass as my animals.

I would spend hour after hour in the summer sun– usually with my shirt off– creating all sorts of fantastical creatures from the grass and spinning my own stories about their natural history and evolution.

I don’t remember when I first learned about evolution, but I knew about it from a very early age. It fascinated me, and I was always trying to create creatures from my leaves of grass that reflected some sort of evolutionary anomaly. I created several species of North American platypuses and several types of pack hunting canid, which I contended evolved from foxes and the African wild dog lineage.

Imaginations are beautiful things, even if they sometimes lead us into some eccentricities.

My parents were expecting a boy who was into sports and cars,  but I’d have none of it.

Creating my characters with the grass was my favorite thing to do.

I still can’t tell you the rules of baseball or football, but I can tell you how to turn a foxtail into an echidna.

You just have to look at it a certain way.

However, most people don’t know how to look.

And I guess I came across as that oddball child.

Maybe I was an embarrassment at times.

I tried not to be.

But I know now that certain seeds were sown in those summer days.

As I matured and became educated through high school, undergrad, and grad school, my writing matured.

It’s still maturing.

But this skill has allowed me to tap back into that world I created with the grass and make it something that others can appreciate.

Even today, when I’m out with the dog during those long summer days, you might see that I have a blade of grass in my hand.

I might be winding it in my hands like a rosary.

My lips might be moving as if I’m saying some sort of prayer.

I’m not.

I’m tapping into my imagination.

I’m creating.

Maybe I’ll use what I’m creating in whatever I’m writing for this blog.

Maybe it will die off as soon as I drop the blade.

It matters not.

This is my mediation.

This is my escape.

This is when I create.

This is when I am free.

It may be weird, bizarre, or entirely bonkers.

But this is what I do.

It’s unorthodox.

But it’s me.