please keep on the grass
I was walking through my neighborhood–just walking–when I heard it: a sharp, piercing sound. It was a whistle. Not the kind used to hail a cab or pass time but a commanding whistle, pointed and domineering. The kind of whistle used on dogs. Except it was for me.
The whistle came from a maintenance man patrolling a stretch of grass in front of an apartment complex. The grass, still littered with leaves from September and October, was nothing pristine, but he still called me out for walking on the grass.
And sure, we could say that this guy was just doing his job, following whatever orders his boss had given him. Maybe he didn’t mean to come off so aggressive. Maybe he hasn’t been taught that whistling at women–at anyone–is creepy. Or maybe I’m being too generous.
Either way, the whistle sent a message. Without words, it said, You don’t belong here. It could have happened anywhere because almost everywhere, there’s some guy drawing invisible lines on the natural world, deciding who gets to exist on even the smallest patch of earth. Keeping people off the grass goes beyond aesthetics–it’s about control, ownership, and the long-standing battles over who gets to enforce the boundaries of nature.
The history and drama of lawns goes way back. Even before colonial times, the lawn was a marker of status, a symbol imported from proper English estates where hemmed, cash-green yards were markers of status and power. In America, the lawn is wrapped up in the American Dream, an essential part of the white-picket fence promise of purity, elitism, and capitalism. I’m trying to avoid making a pun about how the quest for the perfect lawn gained traction or led people to thirst for more, but that’s what happened. A whole industry has been built on convincing people they need to tame the ground they walk on. By 2030, economic experts predict lawn care will be a $69 billion industry in the United States (compared to $17 billion in Europe). That’s billions invested in toxic herbicides and pesticides that destroy ecosystems and pollute waterways. And even more billions of gallons of water poured out to maintain that emerald-green hue, a superficial symbol of man’s desire to control nature.
But not everyone longs for a pristine, green lawn–especially those who live in drought-stricken areas. Movements like “Kill Your Lawn,” are urging homeowners to swap their grass for native plants that require less water. There’s also “No Mow May,” where letting the yard grow wild has become a way to support bees and other pollinators. Because when a yard stops being manicured and uniform, something magical happens–grass grows wild and along with it a vibrant ecosystem emerges. Tall grass becomes a habitat for insects, small animals, and microorganisms that enrich the soil, increasing biodiversity. Scientists have even found that blades of grass “talk” to each other through their root systems, sharing resources and warning each other about threats. I imagine a whole Richard Scarry-style grass world, with highways and conversation networks, relationships and communities built around blades of grass growing as part of something bigger than themselves.
And when grass can just be, it knows how to thrive. Blades of grass, which Walt Whitman celebrated as, “no less than the journey-work of the stars” have, however, become tangled into politics, twisted into symbols of conformity. I’m not saying it’s grass’s fault, but grass has become kind of a mascot of obedience, a barometer of submission, too scared to stand out. Grass is like that person who could be cool, if only they stopped talking about their job all the time. Each blade is expected to stay in place and conform to the roundup-ready protocol. And should any of them dare to grow too wild or tall, then it’s off with their heads.
Enforcing these rigid borders isn’t just about taming nature; it’s about control. Like, if I can own nature, I can control the ground, and then by extension, I can control the people who set foot on my grass. I can even whistle at them. And while there’s nothing surprising about some dude trying to dominate Mother Nature and telling me where I’m allowed to put my body and how I should move through the world, there is a question of how I should respond to it.
And I’ll confess something–the worst part of the interaction with the guy wasn’t actually the whistle. The worst part was I turned around, and in doing so, I acknowledged the whistle. I quickly rolled my eyes and kept on walking across the grass, but I still had that obedient reflex. Even as I tried to tune out his red-faced shouting, there was a little voice inside my head holding a clipboard and scolding me, or at least making me second-guess if I’d done something wrong.
That internalized voice is what Jenny Lewis refers to when she sings about the “the little cop inside that prevents me.” A tiny authority figure that polices the way we talk and dress, the way we move through the world. It’s the legacy of internalized oppression and a culture that tells us we’re not supposed to take up too much space.
But taking up space is the healthy response. Audre Lorde wrote about self-preservation, and how that word means more than just surviving. Self-preservation is about grounding ourselves through art, rest, and nature. These acts of reclaiming space, time, and humanity have sustained me during a transition in my life when there’s little certainty. At the moment, I’m unemployed, my circle of friends has shrunk, my country is a mess, and even my apartment, once a sanctuary, is now just a temporary home.
The only permanence is change. And to quote Remy from Ratatouille, “change is nature.” That’s why I’ve found it so comforting to be in the thick woods, under the yellow trees, jumping into running rivers and feeling the grass beneath my feet. When I come back from an excursion, I notice how even the green spaces in urban and suburban areas feel artificial, especially when a sign (or a whistle) instructs me to “keep off!” I was recently in Vienna where some of the parks don’t even allow dogs to enter on a leash. I get that cities are trying to maintain a certain aesthetic, but at what cost? The idea that we’re not allowed to be a part of nature, that we’re not allowed to touch grass, divides us from our environments and ourselves. Because we are nature, and the more we’re driven away from it, the more divisions exist inside our own bodies. This separation puts our humanity at risk as well as our ability to connect with others. As Audre Lorde wrote, “the future of our earth may depend upon the ability of all women to identify and develop new definitions of power and new patterns of relating across difference.” These patterns of connection, of belonging are as much about our relationship to each other as to the ground itself.
I was reminded of this last summer when I visited the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin. I bypassed the crowded Andy Warhol exhibit and ended up in a basement corner looking at an enormous wheatfield. A wheatfield inside a museum, or at least a documentary about one. Agnes Denes’ Wheatfield–A Confrontation (1982) was an art installation that transformed a two-acre landfill in lower Manhattan next to the World Trade Center. The wheatfield was a critique on urban development and a symbol of nourishment in a city where extreme wealth tramples over extreme poverty. But planting a wheatfield in New York City was also a gesture of hope, that people could restore their connection to the natural world. In the field, there were paths that allowed visitors to experience the quiet of golden colors and hear the swishing, towering stalks.
Wheatfield, however, was only a temporary project. That fall, the crop was harvested and the land was reclaimed by developers. Today it’s Battery Park condos and pavement, but the golden field’s brief existence in the shadow of skyscrapers raised questions about what capitalism robs from city dwellers and what life might be like if there was more access to green space, which is rapidly
disappearing everywhere.
There’s something so heartbreaking about the end of that project. It feels like a metaphor for all the wheatfields inside our own bodies and souls–the pockets of wildness that get sacrificed to meet deadlines or say the right thing at the party. We give up pieces of ourselves for our jobs and relationships. We sit at desks, stare at screens and get lonely, forgetting that we’re nature just as much as the blades of grass and the stars and the open sky.
The more time I spend connecting to nature, the smaller my “little cop” gets. That might mean I’ll continue to fall even farther behind society’s expectations of me: I’m not married. I don’t have children. I don’t have a job or a home with a big lawn. In the eyes of many people, how I live my life is a sign that something has gone very wrong. But being untethered also means more freedom and less pressure to follow the rules. I walk on the grass, I leave the party when I’m not having fun, I even cry in public because this is the space I want to take up.
Just the other day, while on a walk in the woods, I broke down–because life is hard and there’s not always a clear path. I cried until my eyes were swollen, a mess of tears and snot. I was with my dog, trying to keep up a game of fetch, when I heard someone call out.
“Excuse me!”
It was a woman’s voice. “Is this yours?”
She was holding the dog’s muddy ball that had gotten lost along the way. As I got closer, she saw my puffy face and red eyes, but she didn’t look at me with fear or pity. She smiled, handed me the ball, and I said thank you and continued walking.
Kaitlin Roberts is a writer based in Berlin. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Narrative Magazine, The New Ohio Review, The Atticus Review, and others. Read more of her fiction and essays on her Substack.
photos by mark dellas