Ontario recently banned the use of pesticides throughout the province, excluding golf courses. I am thinking about this as I drive past a local course (as far as I know they aren’t banned anywhere in Quebec). Thinking about whether golf courses use pesticides all over the course, or whether they reserve the chemicals for the flat space around the holes. As you can see, I’m not a golfer. I don’t even know what that space is called. The green?
I thought also of a twit interviewed on the news who was against the ban on private property because he used pesticides to kill earthworms under his lawn. “The raccoons dig up the earthworms, tearing apart my lawn.” So much for a patch of wilderness in his backyard.
And as I’m thinking these things, five crows lifted off from the course. They had been standing in a more or less straight line. Four flew away from the road, over the course. The fifth flew toward my car, and used the air the car pushed away as it moved forward to rise above me, twisting toward the course. As a visual artist, I wish I could show you what this looked like: five crows in a line, lifting into a dark grey sky, over a bright green golf course. The thoughts and the flights took about two seconds. The trees lining the roadside. The sand pit. The pond. The asphalt.