The Omnivore's Dilemma - Michael Pollan [62]
But return to that Iowa farm field for a moment and look at the matter—at us—from the standpoint of the corn plant itself. Corn, corn, corn as far as the eye can see, ten-foot stalks soldiering in perfect thirty-inch rows to the far horizon, an 80-million-acre corn lawn rolling across the continent. It’s a good thing this plant can’t form an impression of us, for how risible that impression would be: the farmers going broke cultivating it; the countless other species routed or emiserated by it; the humans eating and drinking it as fast as they can, some of them—like me and my family—in automobiles engineered to drink it, too. Of all the species that have figured out how to thrive in a world dominated by Homo sapiens, surely no other has succeeded more spectacularly—has colonized more acres and bodies—than Zea mays, the grass that domesticated its domesticator. You have to wonder why we Americans don’t worship this plant as fervently as the Aztecs; like they once did, we make extraordinary sacrifices to it.
These, at least, were my somewhat fevered speculations, as we sped down the highway putting away our fast-food lunch. What is it about fast food? Not only is it served in a flash, but more often than not it’s eaten that way too: We finished our meal in under ten minutes. Since we were in the convertible and the sun was shining, I can’t blame the McDonald’s ambiance. Perhaps the reason you eat this food quickly is because it doesn’t bear savoring. The more you concentrate on how it tastes, the less like anything it tastes. I said before that McDonald’s serves a kind of comfort food, but after a few bites I’m more inclined to think they’re selling something more schematic than that—something more like a signifier of comfort food. So you eat more and eat more quickly, hoping somehow to catch up to the original idea of a cheeseburger or French fry as it retreats over the horizon. And so it goes, bite after bite, until you feel not satisfied exactly, but simply, regrettably, full.
II
PASTORAL
GRASS
EIGHT
ALL FLESH IS GRASS
1. GREEN ACRES
Early in the afternoon on the first day of summer, I found myself sitting in the middle of an impossibly green pasture, resting. “The longest day of the year” is what I would jot down in my notebook in bed late that night, followed by “literally,” which was then struck out and replaced with “figuratively.” What can I say? I was tired. I’d spent the afternoon making hay, really just lending a hand to a farmer making hay, and after a few hours in the midday sun hoisting and throwing fifty-pound bales onto a hay wagon, I hurt. We think of grass as soft and hospitable stuff, but once it’s been dried in the sun and shredded by machines—once it’s become hay—grass is sharp enough to draw blood and dusty enough to thicken lungs. I was covered in chaff, my forearms tattooed red with its pinpricks.
The others—Joel Salatin, whose farm this was; his grown son, Daniel; and two helpers—had gone off to the barn for something, leaving me with a welcome moment in the pasture to gather myself before we cranked up the baler again. We were racing to get this hay in before thunderstorms predicted for the evening. It was Monday, my first of seven days working on the farm, and thus far my principal conclusion was that in the event I survived the labors of the week, I would never again begrudge a farmer any price he cared to name for his produce: one dollar for an egg seemed entirely reasonable;