Grass Knows Something

Inspired by reading the work of naturalist naturalist Henry Beston, I wrote an article asking why we place animal kingdoms below us. My piece, titled “Are You An Anthropocentrist?” is packed with facts but doesn’t truly get to the heart of what I hoped to say.

I found that heart.

It beats resoundingly in a deeply wise essay by Canadian author Luanne Armstrong. She puts into words, beautifully, what I so often think about as I observe the living world around me.

Grass is not only alive, it is responsive, and in its grass way, aware. Grass, mowed, turns into lawns, but given a chance, it will spring up and go wild in a very short time. It will cover sidewalks, parking lots, and walls. People rarely notice grass and yet they walk on grass all the time. They sit on it, lie on it. How many look down and see that the grass is alive?

Current research indicates that grass knows something. The smell of mown grass, which to the human nose seems so pleasant, is actually the smell of pheromones sent out by the grass. It is threatened, calling to pollinating insects. But we don’t hear it as that because we don’t know.

The grass is alive, I can say. But then I stop. What do I mean? Does the grass have consciousness, emotions, intelligence? I can’t tell. How to translate the grass? The grass looks inert but it is always moving. It grows, changes, exudes pheromones, and sends out root tendrils that find cracks in the strongest concrete. If I lie on the grass, does the grass say hello back from within its grass aliveness?

I may never truly know but it doesn’t matter. The realization of the aliveness of the non-human is the crack in the paradigm, a shift from understanding nature as passive, unfeeling, and mechanical, to seeing the non-human all around us as aware, a huge something in which we, as humans, participate but can never control, that we can study, become aware of, learn about and find many patterns of translation.

Read her entire essay here.

And check out Ms. Armstrong’s recent book, The Light Through the Trees: Reflections on Farming.