Ever since moving ashore last fall, I have been slowly acclimating myself to life on land. I no longer wake up in the middle of the night to check the bilge, feel the urge to stockpile ice and freshwater or reach for a pump handle to flush the toilet. 

Despite my efforts to adapt to dry land, last week I received a gift that made me realize just how landlocked I have become, and how far I have yet to go.

My father-in-law bought me a lawnmower. 

I couldn’t help but stare at the small, green, gasoline powered push mower as if it was something from Mars.

“Sailors don’t need lawnmowers,” I thought as I poured oil and gasoline into the strange device. “Sailors need rain slickers, life vests, gloves, flare guns, fire extinguishers, sea anchors and extra bilge pumps. Not lawnmowers.”

My wife wasn’t so taken aback. As soon as the motor was running, she latched onto the machine’s handle and began slashing away at the weeds that have been overrunning our front porch and back yard since the last bit of snow melted away months ago. My father-in-law and I moved the picnic table and simply watched as she happily went back and forth, leaving piles of clean-cut grass in her wake. 

Maybe it was the smell of the gasoline and the grass flying through the air that brought back memories of rickety hay wagons, Farm-all tractors, the swift clicking sound of mower teeth and warm naps I had taken in the sun during my high school haying career.

I began to think that sprinkling a little dirt into my salty seafarer self-image might not be such a bad thing. Farming was, after all, how I earned enough money to buy my first car, then my second. It was how I learned not to put my thumbs on the inside of a steering wheel – especially on a narrow front end – and that you can mount a tractor tire with nothing more than a can of WD-40 and a match. 

The yard was neatly shaven in about 10 minutes and if you listened closely you could hear the neighbors – who I have spotted scattering weed killer and grass seed into their own plush green lawns – sigh with relief.

I stashed the mower in the garage, feeling like I had grown exponentially more mature in the time it took my wife to mow the lawn. I headed up the driveway, only to find myself confronted with yet another alien addition to my personal sail locker of possessions: 

A weedwacker.

-Nate Jones