Daydream in septic square

Even as temperatures soared into triple digits and rain became a thirsty memory, the little square of land stayed vibrant

Neglected septic tanks will do that in a drought.

For those who don’t know, an oasis like this near a septic system means the tank is just about full. Based on other areas of neglect discovered during our first year on this land and in this house — a worn-out AC unit, a dangerously wobbly toilet, a creosote-crammed flue, and porch screen doors held together with dirt dauber nests — I wasn’t surprised.

The septic square, as I came to call it, is the only “lawn” on the entirety of the three acres. Most of the land is wooded, ranging from thicket to glade, and all is shaded more hours than not during the growing season except for here — because of the septic tank — and the vegetable garden. So this minuscule section is the only place I mow besides some trails through the woods. It takes about 10 minutes. The lightness of that one chore adds immensely to the charm of this place.

As summer relentlessly poured on heat and light, the little patches of grass scattered here and yon in the partially sunny spots browned and crisped. So I decided to let the septic square sprawl into a mass of verdant shagginess. I told my wife I spared the square because the green, despite it living on toilet-water life support, was calmly reassuring. It offered a normalness in this drought that helped me deal with somber realities fast becoming the new norm of our world. But I don’t need much of an excuse to leave the mower parked. My first employment at age 14 was with a small business in my small town. Mowing was a big part of the job. Besides growing a little pile of cash for fishing gear that summer, I also grew a large pile of hatred for the growling mower, the smelly fuel can, and pull ropes. Nowadays I’ve got an electric self-propelled push mower that starts with the mash of a button and is about as loud as my Granny’s old sewing machine. I still hate mowing, though. And besides that loathing of the mower and all it symbolizes, working the land for nothing but grass clippings makes me feel like a sucker.

But despite my best efforts at being a lazy lout, one day when the heat finally broke but the drought did not, I got tangled up in a damned ol’ cultural guilt trip. The septic square needed mowing. It was the responsible and grownup thing to do.

Why is mowing the responsible grownup thing to do? Because a long long time ago, my ancestors, and likely yours, decided idle hands give too many folks too much time to think. Because a neatly mown lawn is supposedly a sign of high character. Because lack of conformity is really the only thing that can threaten your status in the social hierarchy. Or maybe none of that. I don’t know. I don’t make the cultural rules. But I am sometimes still a slave to them.

After weeks of feral existence, the grass was so dense that I had to do a pre-mow walkthrough. The pre-mow walkthrough for high grass is a classic “dad” ritual much like following family around the house to ensure light switches are flicked off and the fridge door is shut tight. Like all dad rituals, there’s pragmatic purpose behind the anal retentiveness. Thick sticks, rocks, or a dog’s chew toy could easily be hiding in the grass and possibly wreck the mower. Thick as the grass was, I expected to find something in there.

And find something I did. It was something I’d lost a long time ago.

My first step flushed a covey of giant winged grasshoppers — three, four, five, six — each long as my pinky finger, buzzing and clicking, wings flickering in sunlight. Another flock of six-legged creatures rose with the next footfall. It went on like this, each step rousing and revealing life in abundance as I wandered farther into the tiny vivacious ecosystem. I reached the shaded middle in just half a dozen steps as hoppers scattered through the air and into the tangles of this meadow in miniature. There, seduced by the charms of a drowsy afternoon, I decided to sit for really no good reason and hoped the neighbors weren’t watching.

When I saw that none were, I laid back onto the unexpected luxuriance of a damp grass mattress on a hot August day. The warm languid air and cool viridescence pulled heavy at my eyelids, and I was soon caught away on the whirring wings of late summer flight to somewhere decades ago, back to a vibrant perspective faded and worn by the wear of years. 

I opened my eyes to rust-colored grasshoppers flying through softened sunbeams. Some climbed high and hovered like harriers, their black wings flashing golden accents like strobes in the bright midday sun. Off my elbow an ashy hopper with legs of cobalt leaped away at a gentle angle, its flaring yellow flutters arcing gracefully back into the grass. Down below, crickets moved within the shadows as tiny shadows themselves, appearing and disappearing as inky apparitions while wingless hoppers of every earthy hue skipped from stem to stem and velvet-covered jumping spiders prowled through the blades.

Scurrying brown motion drew my eyes to the cedar log bordering what was planned to be a corn bed before drought evaporated our ambitions. A glossy ground skink glided under the log frictionless, sliding above the soil with silken ease. Farther down the log, a rough-hewn fence lizard perched on a knot lapped up ants one by one as they paraded undeterred from the dark wilderness of tall grass into the wide clear open.

Deep within the darkest emerald recesses… something glistened and shifted… wet and mottled… gazed back at me with primordial eyes.

A leopard frog.

On this stony hill so far from water.

In the middle of a drought.

Because I didn’t mow.

To hell with cultural guilt trips.

I don’t know how long I wandered in the grass on knees and elbows, never moving more than a few feet but exploring a land wild as the Amazon basin. Minutes melted into hours until shadows enveloped the house and the square. And as remnants of daylight clung to the far hills, something sprawling and vibrant in my soul tightened and dimmed with the day. It was time to crawl out of the grass, to step back into the world of calendars and clocks and demands fabricated long before I was born. A world passed down under the guise of heritage but feeling more and more like a curse. A world that none of us would choose if only we had the choice.

Cicadas hummed their twilight song from stoic post oaks as big brown bats swirled through tired hickory leaves. I pushed the mower back into our garden shed and locked the heavy door.