Digging in the dirt. Primal. Evocative. Soothing. Despite the rain got up off the couch (down with a cold), slipped on the rain gear, rode the farm bike out to help harvest sorrel, arugula, spinach and other veggies (even oranges!) for the farm CSA. Nose running. A sneeze here a sneeze there. No matter. I was outside. Digging in the dirt.
Rain stopped, sun came out, jacket off, time to move irrigation piping dragging it down field. Realignment of rows to make the farm road bigger for tractor turn arounds. Slowly my energy level starts to rise. Another bag of popcorn taken home, grown on the farm, spirits rising further, sitting in the sun before I head west to farm school for the evening. Big ranch classroom. Lots of horses around. A sunset to watch over the coast mountains. Hawks soaring above. Golden rays through palm trees, valley oaks, olive trees. What cold? It's not going to keep me from these things. These things make me stronger, this cold doesn't stand a chance.
Hummingbirds now screech screech screeching, sun intensifies, I can feel my immune system calling in reinforcements. Sun is my protector. I use it instead of NyQuil. Truck door slams, a wheezing ensues. A familiar wheezing, laborer pulling cord, the machine choking to life, three more pulls and the engine screams to full blast. The hummingbirds stop. The jays alight and take off for cover somewhere else. The engine whirs a high pitched yell as the laborer guns the throttle, black smoke pierces the blue sky, three more revs just to make a point, the machine slings over his shoulder, the blowhole in his hand, sloshing gas tank and now the cloud of dust whipped into the air, this way, that way, doesn't matter as long as things are flying around it seems. Leaves flying about from one place to another, some make the intended spot, others don't.
Revving more now dust cloud soaring the laborer moves a pile of dirt and leaves and tissue and a soda can and twigs and ladybugs and cigarette butts from one part of the yard to another part, some of it into the street (who cares?), some of it into the neighbor's yard. Melancholy moon now in the sky the quiet killed the laborer and his machine work to "clean up" someone's yard who's at work, not here to hear this deafening scourge, to see what they've paid someone to do.
Three more times I will hear this at three more houses. Everyone paying cheaply leafblowers to blow around things in their yard. Rakes are so 20th century. Work is a thing of the past. Machines will do it for us. Laziness. Sloth. Torpor. While the owner of the company rakes in the cash by doing this his little machines, these backpacked devils of pollution, spew more carbon per hour than......well here:
In 2000, the California Environmental Protection Agency found that a half-hour of leaf-blower usage produced enough carbon monoxide to equal 440 miles of driving at 30 miles per hour.
And all that dust, all of those fine particles kicked up and around suspend themselves in the air and contribute to poor air quality as particulate matter. This is the stuff that wreaks havoc on those with asthma, and
worse:
Particulate matter (PM) has been implicated as being responsible for a wide variety of adverse health effects that have been shown in epidemiological studies to contribute to premature deaths (Pope et al. 1995).
But the scourge on the land, air and water (and our health) are only one part of the costs we bear while the owner of the landscaping (or leafblower) company buys a new house, a boat, the chalet in the mountains. Wealth must be accumulated you see by a few while society pays the true cost of these machines. No one seems to care anymore that our soundscape (let alone landscape) is ravaged by this hissing, spitting, cacophony of machines that invade our neighborhoods because of some weird fascination with perfect grass, square hedges, leafless (and lifeless) dirt. Quiet and peace be damned. Profit above all else.
Do we hear these things anymore or are our lives so filled with noise now that nothing seems to faze us? Are we so frantically attached to our busyness, our constant chatter (tweet this, chat that, text me text me text me!) that we no longer care that our neighborhoods sound like sawmills? Like standing next to a 500 pound mosquito with bad gas?
Some communities have had enough. Some have banned gas powered leafblowers. Imagine having to use a rake. A RAKE (!) by god. Imagine having to work again. Having to use our muscles. To stay fit. To stay healthy. To be outside, staying limber, talking to our neighbors (shutter!). Imagine that. Imagine quiet. Imagine valuing the sound of hummingbirds. The sound of wind, real wind, whirring through the trees. Imagine the stench of these machines being relegated to the owner of the company's house who wishes to foist this mess on us for his precious, precious profit. Imagine measuring the costs of things in terms larger than mere cost per gallon to operate.
Some people buy priuses, shop at organic groceries, send checks into the NRDC and pat themselves on the back for being such green stewards of the earth and then turn around and pay someone else to take care of their yards (while they're conveniently not there) who in turn sends in troops armed with belching, bleeding, stinking machines that in one pass over their Elizabethan era landscape all of those carbon offsets they purchased go puffing up in smoke. Up in smog. Up in 120 decibels of rage, impotence, and fear.
Imagine a time when we're enlightened enough to look back on this era and laugh at ourselves (both for our folly and for our obvious ignorance). Imagine a system where we tax the owner of the company who uses these machines to account for the true costs of his actions.
Imagine quiet. Imagine clean air. Imagine sanity. Is it too late for that?