This summer I've been using a scythe around the farm. I swing it, rotating from the hips, and there goes a stand of nettles. Another effortless swing, and down goes a burdock.
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I work my way around the pasture, scything along the fence line, and every few minutes I stop to whet the blade with a natural stone the shape of elongated biscotti. And what I have learned about a scythe is this: holding one is like grasping the live end of history, a link to the past.
It's impossible, I think, to whet a scythe — the blade held upright before you — without feeling as though you're impersonating death, whether it's Bergman's Death or Monty Python's (the salmon mousse!). And it's impossible to swing the blade in a shearing motion without thinking of Bruegel, of his Death scything away in the Prado or his white-shirted peasants cutting wheat (with a stroke more elegant than Death's) in the Met.
You watch the blade doing its work; you consider the elegant curve of the snath, the long handle that holds the blade, and you realize that this is a tool whose shape has evolved from hand to hand over the centuries. It's as though you're cutting grass with something as timeless as the lunar crescent.
No other tool on the farm has the power to carry me back so far in time, to let me imagine an era when such a blade was one of the few metal objects a laborer's family might own.
The odd thing about using a scythe now is that it saves you from the labor of that labor-saving device called the weed whacker. Every time I pick up the scythe — whether I'm cutting a corner of orchard grass in the pasture or making my way into the brambles — I realize how effortless it is, especially when the blade is sharp.
No fumes; no roaring engine; no whining plastic string; and no safety gear, like boots and earplugs. The scythe is nearly silent. Its subtle swish allows you to imagine the venerable sound of a field full of men and women with scythes, working in pattern. After a while, you seem to become one of them.
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