Sometimes the only thing that
will soothe my nerves is to be shut up in a small space. I’ve never measured the enclosure, but I’m
guessing it’s less than 20 square feet. When
I close the door, I am untethered from the noise and distractions of the world.
Perched high on
a comfortable seat, I have four glass walls to absorb the advice of Yogi Berra:
“You can observe a lot by watching.” For about 12 hours over the Memorial Day
weekend, I did a lot of watching and thinking inside the cab of my Kubota. I call those sessions “tractor therapy.”
There’s a
radio, but I’ve never turned it on. My
cell phone is switched to vibrate and tucked beneath my left leg. All I want to hear is the hum of the diesel
engine and the whir of the rotary mower.
And from the moment that I grip
the steering wheel, I start to feel better.
You
know the feeling. There are days when
you look back—at quitting time—and wonder: “What did I accomplish today?” That’s never an issue on mowing day if your
equipment behaves. The tractor has
mirrors, but I like to—every now and then—turn sideways. Keeping an eye on where I’m going, while seeing
where I’ve just been. The neat strip
next to the tall grass says without saying: “Hey,
you just accomplished something.”
My
first pass is always around the fence lines.
I want to check for needed repairs. From five feet up, Yogi, you really
can see a lot, such as ground-nesting birds.
Meadowlarks are busy laying eggs right now, so I’m always alert to mow
around where a momma bird is doing her thing.
There is one that likes to nest near the pole barn. When she sees the tractor coming, she’ll do
her frantic broken-wing act to lure me away from her soon-to-be-born
family. I smile and steer wide.
Thistle
does not make me smile. The prickly
stalks with purple blooms are a natural beauty. Birds love thistle, but it’s an invasive
menace to pastures. I didn’t mow the
entire cow pasture, but I did declare war on the unwelcomed weed. If anyone had
been observing, they might have thought, “That fellow on the tractor must be
drunk.” The only bottle that I had was
full of water. I was zigging and zagging over 40 acres to target thistle.
With
the soggy spring, our mule, donkeys and llamas can’t stay ahead of the galloping
grass. Every few weeks, I have to give
them some help. The animals don’t like
the tractor. Maggie, our 12-year-old mule, bucks and kicks when the big orange
machine chugs into her pasture. She’ll
make a few mad dashes around the field and then skid to a stop. Staring at me, Maggie will snort, as to say,
“Just hurry up and get out of here.”
And then she trots into the barn.
The
opposite happens at the pond. The fish
are happy to see me. They follow the
tractor’s shadow to the dam. They know
it is suppertime. And after I fling
their food into the water, I plop on a bench to watch the catfish, bream and
grass carp put on a frenzied show.
When
the water calms, I am calm, too. Climbing back into my small space, I aim the
tractor west, anticipating God’s peaceful show.
Almost always, as if He took a spatula and smeared rainbow sherbet in
the sky, the sunset is spectacular.
More
doctors ought to prescribe tractor therapy.
dnesmith@cninewspapers.com
