A Thicket

Yesterday I heard a peep, bright and insistent. It was a sparrow roosting in the bamboo that flanks the west side of the house. The little bird found a good place to shelter.

Our bamboo grove is a mass of leaves and stems, lush and green, some bending, many still upright. I look into the tight center of it all and remember the joy of hidden places, of climbing under the forsythia when I was young, of entering the cinder trail (below) as recently as last Saturday.

It is the human need for enclosure, for a safe spot from which to peer out at the rest of the world. It's Robinson Crusoe and his protective hedge, or our Neanderthal ancestors in their secluded cave. We don't always need it, or always seek it out. But it's good to know that it's there.