Zany Botany.

Nature has a strange way of lurking. It hides from the most ardent observers and flaunts itself shamelessly before others. It's so confident in its own beauty that the most casual of passerbys will find themselves enchanted by its boldness. I was such a spectator, one of the usual bunch of strutting teenagers who fancied themselves more adapted to the Internet and Super Smash Mario Bros than to the sunny and leafy Meijer greenhouse. My father, an avid recently-turned gardener, had dragged me unceremoniously to the flowering, buzzing, dripping, smelling, stifling, and sweltering plant-house. As I stood in a muddy puddle, silently cursing the lack of air conditioning, I clenched my hand around the book I had brought to comfort my foul-tempered soul. Oh look, it's The Botany of Desire, the irony.

I sulked down the aisles of blooming greens, swatting bugs left and right with my book. Pollan should be proud; his book might just "guide" an unsuspecting insect to une fleur provocatrice and kick off the next new flurry of botanical revolutions. You're welcome world, Annie's Tulip has just arrived, and bidding will start at $500. When I finally found a dried and semi-cleaned flat surface, I promptly flopped myself down and began my reading assignment. It was then when my eyes landed on the most gorgeous, extraordinary, and striking pot of plant named poa pratensis, or, as it is more commonly known, Kentucky Bluegrass.

Despite being the plainest and most modest plant in the greenhouse, the Bluegrass beckoned to me like a siren's song. Its unvaryingly green shoots barely swayed in the occasional breeze, and, if a plant could seem content, the Bluegrass would be positively humming as it basked in the sunlight. It was still relatively young judging by the shortness and tenderness of its shoots. I was overcame by a desire to run my hand over its sprouts. Would it be as smooth as I imagined, or would it be pleasantly bristly? My latter expectation turned out true. The grass was prickly, almost shyly so. The morning dew still lingered; when I pulled my hand away, a residue of soil and water clung to my fingers. Strangely enough, I didn't mind.

When I asked my father to let me plant some Kentucky Bluegrass seeds in an unclaimed corner of the lawn, he hesitantly agreed. I had never expressed much of an interest in gardening before, so he was justifiably concerned. I went ahead anyways, using the conventional shovel-and-seed method enshrined by novice gardeners around the world. Whether my seeds will ever poke their verdant heads through the dirt remains to be seen, but I can't help but feel a little giddy at the prospect of being partners with Nature. This little botanical patch of mine may not yield any vegetables or flowers, but that doesn't make it any less valuable to me.

Call of the mall, I mean wild.

I have never been one for long treks through the wilderness. The idea required a bit too much walking than my laziness was willing to give, and the thought of bug bites alone was too unappealing for my brain to handle. (I shuddered as I typed). Yet recently, perhaps because of these wilderness-centric essays we have been reading in class, I found myself daydreaming about ambling along forest-shaded paths, and marveling over nature at work. The solitude of such a task is daunting, especially for someone like me who enjoys the company of others so, but this urge to experience what others have glorified will not be squashed.

My friend, who is staunchly anti-nature (unless we are discussing organic hair products), snickered at my ideas. "Why would you," he chuckled condescendingly, "leave racks of cashmere and velvet for bark and dirt?" After pondering for a second, he amended his earlier statement, "I guess if you really wanted to go on a picnic, you might go outside. But still, even then, you don't leave your lawn for some trees and bears. That's preposterous!" I'll concede that the notion of meeting a bear is rather intimidating, but I feel compelled to explore this world around me. I have always appreciated it in the forms of shopping centers and artificial parks, yet never in the way that Nature itself intended me to. To do so, I must leave the comfort of modern society and into the unknown of majestic forests and winding mountains.

... Just kidding! Well, sort of. Being a lazy adolescent, I am confined by many restraints, among them my parents' wishes. Although my parents appreciate the outside world enough to plant a few trees (long dead) and plan a few trips (never came to fruition), they would never allow me to go on a hike alone into uncharted forests and live alone in a cabin on top of a forsaken mountain. I don't think they would necessarily stop me either if I decided to pack my bags and order a ticket to Alaska because they know that I would come scrambling home before I ever make it outside the borders of Illinois.

So maybe when I'm older, I'll go on this promised trip. Perhaps someday I'll be able to finally understand these epiphanies that one stumbles upon in solitude and nature. But in the meantime, I'll just have to wait and struggle a bit longer in this mundane life.