On entering, I felt an urge to step lightly on the ground but as I became one of many who trampled and flattening underfoot – these fragile alive things. My arms folded against the wind, my mind folded against the other people’s bodies and my ears folded in away from the sounds of chit chat and I wondered how I could take the invitation I’d been offered to follow the movement of the grass.

In an effort to get far away from myself, I followed a path of flattened grasses to their very edge. Standing with my waist against the nylon rope, I heard the mechanical high pitch of a building towering before me and my ears caught the tinnitus sound of harmonics. I wished it wasn’t there, and the traffic all around the site, it deafened me. An ambulance passed and I saw a body dying in my minds eye. And the ugly pipes pressed in all around me. So much effort to engineer these little grasses, curtailed by the rope and the marshaled edge of the land around.

Starring beyond the wall outside and into the building I studied it and wanted to name it, to know what ugly stuff went into it, what went on there and the wind made my body cold.

Then in the blur between, me standing on the grass, the rope and the concrete building beyond, I saw a sizable rat walk across in-between the ivy and the top of the wall, slowly under, across and inside the leaves.

I thought I hated rats.

I watched it recede into the undergrowth and then I did the same.

Lying down, flattening myself, down and on the hay beneath me. The ground softly taking my weight, it is a relief, and I give my whole spine to it, and that is good. I feel quite alone and a peace creeps upon me.

I close my eyes to the smell of the grass….breathing thing…… I open my eyes to a patch of blue flowers….breathing in….. I close my eyes to the touch of the wind… breathing thing…. I open my eyes and see vibrant leaves and silver tips all around me now. I close my eyes and feel the prick of nettles on the back of my hand and hear the glorious noise of weeds and grasses deep and green, moving amidst the wet.

A sense of harmony now there in the place; concrete, rubbish, metal, earth, noise, animal, brick, rope, nettle and flowers. The sky widens and my eyes recede inside, inner eyelids close.

The thing is, I’d been interested in what I’d been asked to do – to follow the movement of the grass. Thoughts had been traveling through fast; pick up the swaying movement, pick up the dipping movement, the flattening down, the random swirling, the straight body stork and stem, the ears on top of the hay shaking, scattering seed, rough patches and dips. But what with the mutterings, the disorder, complexity and a choreographers mind – have a plan, a map then execute it, control the outputs. But in this place of weeds …. And with all the noise I couldn’t.. I didn’t want to.

This rat then, using up the debris, a servant, inhabiting the moment.

My back body against the ground.

Rats feet in the air

… I’m compelled by some kind of pull, socks off and into my shoes, I fold up my scarf and cardigan, fold my arms a different way, and clasp my hands around my head. My head pressing down into the soil and the layered grass ever so softly supporting me up. …. and
I take my feet up and the cool air surrounds me, the warm damp ground pressing into my head. The bit we call the fontanel; Sirsasana. Now I feel connected to the place, the affect of gravity realized. I feel my legs waving along with the plants and my trunk thicker resisting the movement of the wind. Now my mind is completely quiet, my body engrossed in the business of staying upright. I feel a kinship with the grass, and I feel the soles of my feet open out, tingling as though in tune with the rhythm of the field.

And the space feels infinite and vast with no edges or boundaries.

On coming down, I rested. I look back and imagine me there something like a crouching child or as if I were a stone or clod of earth. The cool damp ground giving me relief and I hear a flock of wild birds pass.

I put on my shoes, socks, scarf and cardigan and returning back. I feel like looking up very very close and bend down burying my eyes in the meadow, and my hands too. I accidentally catch my hair on the way down and my fingers between the grasses attached to the ground. I see the roots and the brown undergrowth with more species laid buried inside and I feel as though I were touching the scalp of the earth through the fronds of grass leaving damp on my fingertips.

The place is infinite and I am a part of it.

Hi Gareth

Sorry for delay, but I’ve just caught up with this – hopefully ironic – poem-comment, for which many thanks.

Earlier on the blog you rightly questioned our hosting of a few bullocks for a few weeks on our little patch of land. Matters have moved on since then at the lazy pace of this lovely countryside. But still we haven’t got a ‘lawn roller’, though coincidentally I have been thinking of getting a bigger one for use on the field as it would help further regenerate the meadow areas. But as – for the time being – I’d have to tow it behind the (very) small tractor/mower used to encourage diversity in the land and keep it accessible, it would seem the ERS is falling short of your ideals.

Not to worry too much yet, though, because I don’t need to buy manure as the straw I make by hand scything the long grass, and the clippings produced by mowing our small bit of lawn, travel in stages to the large composter that was the first structure I built from on-site materials at ERS after we arrived (a house was already here, thank goodness, and it’s mostly made of recyclable/renewable stuff). I must confess, though, that we do burn the weeds that threaten to reduce diversity in some areas, but try to compensate that by leaving a good-sized one for ‘wilding’…

And so it goes.

It’s taken two years to begin even marginally understanding the ERS microclimate, and – having decided early on against a cat in favour of wild birds – we’re just on the verge of bringing in domestic/farm animals to complement the species of wild critters that seem to have appeared in growing numbers since we’ve been here. Maybe one day there’ll be a horse, but it would have to be a small one given the size of our patch. So likely we’d have to borrow a dray from a neighbour (there are a few about, alongside the bullocks) if we wish to roller, mow and till to properly meet your delightful vision of an ideal bucolic scene.

In the meantime, I’m reminded of the saying – not sure exactly where it’s from, sorry, such is the vagueness of countryside lore – the farmers never own the land; the land owns them. (But, of course, a pinch of salt appropriate for the industrial-scale farmers around here.)

Best wishes to you

Baz

PS We’re legally entitled to call ourselves farmers given the status of some of the ERS microclimate, but we’d never dare do that … at least perhaps not until we had a pony small enough to avoid damaging its diversity. Then could be it would be suitably ironic ;-)>