So, fifty years ago in California I carved a piece of volcanic stone into a facsimile of an Easter Island moai. It was subsequently placed in the garden and then moved periodically as vegetation dictated.
In 1974 we moved to Oregon where the environment was much less tropical, or even Mediteranean, but as several species of bamboo fared quite well above the 45th parallel, an area was developed where the Moai didn’t look particularly ‘out-of-place’. The statue was moved a few times in the eighties and nineties as the garden changed but then seems to have been forgotten/lost. For the past twenty or more years I have not entertained one thought about this volcanic rock artifact.
Now, this is where things get ‘strange’.
Yesterday, for a reason beyond my ken, I suddenly found myself asking: Whatever happened to that tiki you carved so many years ago? My memory was a complete, complete blank.
Now, to put things in perspective, I try to walk through most of our gardens once a week, and the sudden realization I could not recall seeing this statue for many, many years was a little disturbing, I even thought that perhaps someone had appropriated it for their own enjoyment years ago.
Today, and don’t ask me why, (‘out of the blue’ is a phrase that comes to mind) I had a compelling urge to trim back a particularly agressive patch of Pseudosasa japonica and sasaella masamuneana ‘albostriata’. So with shears, secateurs, loppers and a formidable mattock in hand I began.
After only a few minutes I felt like Howard Carter discovering the tomb of Tutankhamun. As I cut back the bamboo I suddenly stared face to face with my (lost) ‘tiki’.
