Aesthetics vs. Inquiry

I miss the smell of grass in the spring. Then again, I miss the smell of grass in general. Grass conjures up so many memories: of mowing the front and back yards beneath the St. Louis summer sun in High School, listening to The Who and dreaming about asking out the girl I liked; of wrestling with the guys after school in Seventh grade in Brian’s front yard; of sitting on top of the grass hill at the park after the Fourth of July and watching the fireworks show. I don’t often pause to appreciate grass. But today, I did pushups in a large field of graves and felt the soft dirt form to my hands. Moving up and down in rapid breath, I smelled the crispy leaves.

Through my time in this Nature Writing course, I have become aware of a disconnect between the aestheticization of nature and the inquiry into nature, a discrepancy between appearances and depths. Typically, I would remain in the former category, for my traditional view on the natural world has been entirely sensory: listening to the calm chirps of the robins, feeling the gentle touch of the wind, seeing the vibrations of the willows. In fact, I love remaining in the former category, for I find such marvel in the patterns I see—the stream-like formation of the veins splaying through a leaf, the near-perfect geometry of a fallen pine cone. As I focus on these patterns in their aesthetic manifestations, I am calmed, and my worries drift. Investigation into can certainly increase the marvel, but I do not believe it is necessary for appreciation. All depends on how one chooses to relate to nature. 

But now I feel immense pressure to “go deeper,” to spend time researching, that I may be a more informed nature writer. In fact, I feel like a bad person for not veering toward doing that, as if my view on the natural world is somehow incorrect. I have become so much more neurotic about writing, about “entering the flow.” Pre-Chatham, while doing my best to be a Kerouacian vagabond, I would have had no trouble (or displeasure) sitting here on this grass full of leaves and writing about it. Maybe it would have been something like:

The cool wind blows and massages my neck, ruffling my hair and sending the fallen brown leaves twirling in unpredictable motion. Gray clouds migrate rapidly, dropping the first drops of the late afternoon. A beautiful woman jogs by, her Nike soles clomping against the gravel path. Breathing deeply, I am unseen; transparent, I enter into the limitless moment.

Now, I can barely write that, for a wholly new voice has entered my mind. The voice says: “What do you know about leaves? What kind of leaves are they? Do you even know why grass grows? Clouds don’t migrate, you dumbass! And stop checking out every woman you see and just focus on your damn craft.” 

I’ve never been one to understand nature or learn a vocabulary of categories by which we classify it. At Yosemite, I did not stop to read the signs explaining how Half Dome came to be. Rather, I sat on the grass and stared at it, breathing deeply and trying not to blink. 

Maybe I’m lazy, unwilling to learn new things that may amaze me. I am not sure. I am just so amazed by aesthetics, by the way things unfold and deepen the more we focus on them. The Fleet Foxes sing, “If I know only one thing, it’s that everything that I see of the world outside is so inconceivable often I barely can speak.” To be moved into wordlessness, into pure perception. That is how I enjoy nature. That is how I will always enjoy nature. But I now recognize how scientific facts can deepen a perception of something natural. Neither category excludes the other. The grass will always smell delicious.