The Pursuit of Happiness

I thinned out a small stand of giant bamboo this week to get rid of a flock of grackles that spent their nights among its higher branches. I started the stand 10 or 12 years ago from a couple of canes I got from Gordon over at Bear Creek Nursery. The canes I thinned out – about a hundred, I suppose – are 3 to 4 inches in diameter and more than 30 feet tall. As you can tell, Gordon’s two canes and the resulting stand thrived.

I love bamboo. I eat it, I make things out of it, and I like to watch it sway and sing in the wind. But I hadn’t paid much attention to it lately, nor to the 300 grackles that checked in at sunset every night. They are lousy guests. The bamboo’s supple green leaves turned white and sticky with bird muck, and the leaves stopped singing. Worse, these dirty birds brought along a million seed ticks and flies, making me and the Boss and Frankie the dog pretty unhappy.

After a bunch of hard work – in the rain – the grackles are gone, along with the ticks and flies… and the messes I allowed them to make. I’ve also got 1,000 feet of cut bamboo on drying racks. When it dries it’ll become tables and wind chimes and ladders sturdy enough to bear the weight of nearly anyone trying to get closer to the moon. Best of all, the stand is pretty and sweet smelling again and we can see that very moon when we walk through it.

My neglect clearly led to some unintended consequences: a thing of useful beauty grew into ugliness, along with a duty to clean it up. The same thing happens, of course, to our beautiful towns, children, rivers, and government. Ignore anything long enough and it can become spoiled and dirty – and the job of fixing the mess can be a hard one.

I’m sorry I neglected my bamboo stand and promised myself to pay closer attention to it from now on. There may be other things I should notice more, too. We need to keep our eyes open.