“Why do you do it?” a man asked.
I thought I had explained that if we let these invasive weeds grow freely, the grass and native plants would disappear and our meadow would become useless to the ground-nesting birds that depend on it for habitat, which is becoming increasingly scarce. Plus, the meadow is beautiful. Didn’t the photos I had just shown make that clear?
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But the man persisted.
“Why not just let the meadow become whatever it wants to be? And you could sit under that big maple and sip cold wine instead?” he asked, drawing puzzled chuckles from the audience.
Why not indeed? Why willfully choose hard labor? If I didn’t do this work in the meadow, it would turn into brushland and then into forest, which is the natural progression in New England. Meadows are not native here, so it takes lots of labor to keep them in that state. More forest wouldn’t be a terrible future. Surely there are less grueling ways to stay fit. I could walk or bike or swim in a favorite wilderness lake and spend whole afternoons reading in a beach chair.
But if every day were a vacation, wouldn’t the fun lose some of its allure? A day off to swim and read is a novelty. It can be savored guilt free, having been fully earned, and is amplified by a sense of accomplishment.
My parents raised me to avoid physical discomfort. They were Holocaust survivors who had barely survived unimaginably harsh labor and deprivation. They wanted their children to have successful, pain-free lives relying on brains instead of brawn. Laboring in the elements was at the top of their list of things to be avoided.
But I enjoyed physical exertion. I preferred walking to taking the bus. Bagged as many mountains as I could get to on weekends. Cooked up huge meals for friends and family. I didn’t even mind deep cleaning. The end justified the means, but I enjoyed the means too. Long hikes on which I pushed past aching muscles to reach a mountaintop were triumphs; even moving the refrigerator to reach the dust got the blood going.
Physical labor — when it’s voluntary — is a celebration of the body’s capabilities. We’ve evolved to use our bodies to move and exert. Our ancestors’ survival depended on constant physical activity for hunting, gathering, homemaking, building, defending. To disregard the body’s intrinsic need for physical exertion invites a host of ailments associated with a sedentary lifestyle.
When I moved to the suburbs in my 30s, more opportunities for physical exertion presented themselves. I fell in love with gardening. We had a small garden on a rocky ledge under old oaks, and for a while it was thrilling to check the small daily gifts my work yielded: the meager hosta flowers, the novel-to-me bleeding hearts, and the colorful coleus, the only plant that actually thrived. Small successes soon led me to dream of big, sunny gardens to grow more beauty and food.
Decades later, when we finally moved to the country, I quickly realized that rural life came with a new level of physical labor. The large vegetable garden has to be protected from a variety of furry and flying creatures. Harvesting baskets of tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and beans is the much anticipated reward, but all that produce needs to be canned, frozen, or cooked. From scratch. The sprawling perennial flower garden is a source of joy and admiration, but it demands constant attention. I also can’t let the wild blackberries and grapes dry up when they make such scrumptious jam, or stop cutting armfuls of black-eyed Susan and Queen Anne’s lace to stuff in multiple jars indoors. And then there is the meadow we and the birds love.
Each season makes its own demands when you live in the country. In winter, there’s snow to plow and shovel. In autumn, there are leaves to rake and spread on the gardens, and acres of meadow to cut. Spring is a riot of growth that demands diligent scheduling of sowing, planting, watering, weeding. Good thing the days are long.
Still, there is pleasure in the work. The tiredness that comes from yanking out man-sized parsnips, schlepping buckets of water to newly planted trees, or walking miles up and down the hill in search of blackberries is a “good” tiredness. Digging a huge hole in clay soil for a coveted hydrangea works your muscles really hard. Yes, I could stare at a screen on a stationary bike instead. But I get to see the frothy pink blooms to come. Bending for hours removing pesky spurge around the tomatoes is not exhilarating, but its very slowness invites the goldfinches to frolic in the birdbath above my bent head. Weeding some 30 acres of meadow tops the list of my least favorite chores, but I get to study how a persistent bee opens the tightly closed petals of a turtlehead to worm her way in. When I am lost in these small discoveries, in the silence, the solitude, the persistent noise of the world recedes.
I gave a meager answer to the man with the difficult question. I elaborated on the importance of constant work when maintaining a meadow. Instead, this is what I could have said: It’s not easy, and for many it simply doesn’t compute. But an easy life may not add up to happiness.
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