Grant Wiley – The Tender Carnivore and Front Lawns (class reading)


            One of the main ideas from Paul Shepard’s The Tender Carnivore is allowing plants and animals to grow freely. Shepard eventually recommends everyone living in urban centers as hunter-gatherers and allowing everything outside the city to grow freely. This has been a theme that we have discussed many times throughout in this class, and one that I want to address. We have discussed it regarding Dr. Redick’s backyard in which he allows some areas to grow free. Also, in New York’s Central Park, there is the area called the Ramble in which is more freely growing. These areas seem to be the healthiest places and are like what Shepard describes in his book. Another example of this would be the front lawns of Americans and people in most developed countries. We spend money and time trying to make the grass as green and as short as it can be to make our lawns look neat. This is quite the opposite of what Shepard is calling for in his book. Dr. Redick has discussed his lawn and how it is more freely growing, especially in certain areas of the backyard. While it is most likely never going to happen, I think that we should attempt to move away from the culture of pedicured lawns that we have now and towards something more sustainable and environmentally conscious. 

            Comparing Shepard’s ideas to that of Wirzba in From Nature to Creation, there are many similarities. This all comes back to the human attempt to control the wilderness and our separation of ourselves from the environment. Taking Wirzba’s love of Creation that comes from the Christian faith, there should be a different relationship to our front lawns. If we posit ourselves as part of Creation rather than as dominators or controllers, we can attempt to repair this relationship. The presence of crabgrass or dandelions should no longer make us reach for the poison, but instead to be in wonder of the great beauty of Creation and the admiration and thankfulness for the gifts which God has bestowed upon us. Instead of spending most weekends tending to the overgrowth in the backyard, we can spend our time in other pursuits and be thankful for the small part of wilderness that we are able to sustain on our property. While the two books by Shepard and Wirzba have different goals and topics, they really come back to the same idea of our relationship to the world and by extension the future of the Earth itself. 

-  March 20, 2021

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