Bo and I are having an argument about the lawn. He wants more of it and I, less. We stand on a freshly mowed patch of grass at our cabin in the San Juan islands, the place we bought to get away from it all, to relax. The place, I now realize, many people go to do many things, but not to relax. Once I took Bo with me to a yoga class - he went under duress. I remember Bo asking the instructor, "what should I do? sun salutations, back bends?" The instructor replied, "Sit. I want you to sit silently for ten minutes." These were ten of the longest minutes of Bo's life. He never went back.

Bo has one hand on the lawnmower and another on his hip. He brought this mower up from Seattle, put it on a boat, walked it up the gravel road from the county ramp, repeated this cycle due to repairs, and now here he stands, mower, nay, heart in hand, asking me to love him... to let him plow into the brush, reclaim just a bit more lawn, and I, ever cold, calculating, abstract German, am talking Pollution, Habitat, Global Warming, Doing Our Part.




Bo's parents have a cabin a short walk from ours. They have a modest lawn with a few acres behind it that have recovered quite nicely from a clear cut many years before to become a fledgling forest. The forest's recovery is as much the result of years of benign neglect as it is from righteous principles. In the pacific northwest, things just grow. if you leave a piece of land unattended for years, you get a forest. This part of the world is full of unimaginable riches, to those who will let the world do its thing.

Bo's parent's neighbors love the lawnmower. It's a big love, the kind of love you ride on, a love so strong it can pull small cars behind it. The neighbors' lawn cuts a big swath of green from beach to gravel road, with a series of house and deck and boccie ball and horseshoes, and tents, and barbecues, and where can we pour some more concrete and have some more fun. They're very nice people, happy to share the fun with you. They are sucking the marrow out of life, sucking it hard.

So these are the possibilities: wilderness or funhouse, and my philosophical mind immediately attempts to maximize the categorical imperative. Immanuel Kant comes knocking at my door on the route of his afternoon walk, and says, "What if all people acted this way?" And I, I answer, "No trees!" What would Shell Silverstein say, or Jim Henson, or any of those other nice hippies that reached out into my suburban childhood through my tv set? What will I say to these old crunchy ghosts if I can't keep my gay life partner from creating a golf course in the woods? Surely a hot tub will next. He's been harping on that pretty hard for the last few years. What happened to Walden in the woods? Where is that old fart in Alaska who videotaped himself through all those winters for PBS? How close are we to McMansions dotting these quiet shores?

And then I look past Bo, beyond his strong shoulders, across the gravel road, through the trees to the sea and I smile. I want to control this situation. I want to buy up all of this land, tell everyone what they can and can't do on it. I want Bo to do exactly what I say. But I can't and where would that leave us anyway? This place and these people, including Bo, are going to do what they damn well please, just as I will. This is a free country, as any child will tell you. And I damn well better spend as much time sucking the marrow out of it as I spend protecting it. I don't want to look back on many amazing years in this beautiful place only to realize that I spent most of the time worrying about it. More importantly, I'm quite aware of how easy it is to use the environment (or anything) as a proxy for working through my own playground dramas. Am I really protecting a special place or just bending someone to my will?

Bo and I reach a détente on the lawn. We've been together ten years and know how to work through these things. I go inside to my guitar, and later Bo calls in to me to come out. He's got a blanket with him and a look of pure mischief. He wants to show me a path that he mowed into the six foot tall grass in our orchard. He takes me to a place where no one can see us and we lie down together near our fruit trees. The blue sky spreads out above us with the tall grass rustling all around. A red tailed hawk flies over us toward the sea. The sun warms our bodies. And suddenly, my tall grass seems the perfect compliment to Bo's neat edge.