You may remember Sisyphus from Greek mythology. He was the founder and king of Ephrya, and was a tyrannical leader, both devious and deadly, who often slaughtered visitors to his kingdom just to show off his power. His behavior angered the gods, and he received an eternal punishment which consisted of rolling a stone up a hill every day, never reaching the summit, only to have the stone roll back down the hill each evening, so that the next day, Sisyphus had to try again to roll the stone up over the hill — for all eternity.
I’ve pondered on Sisyphus’s fate many times in my life in a sort of existential manner, and I suspect that many of us have had what I like to think of as “Sisyphus moments” where we just can’t seem to reach the summit and find ourselves back at the starting point again and again.
I suspect that my career in human services may have contributed to this sense of incompletion because working with human beings doesn’t often produce immediate results. I adopted the mantra of, “Plant seeds of hope and leave the garden to God,” and while this medicated the angst associated with a lack of “tangible” results, I still experienced a sense of “rolling the stone up the hill every day” only to see it there waiting for me at ground zero the next morning.
You might wonder at this juncture if I viewed this as “eternal punishment” akin to what Sisyphus received, and in all honesty I would say that the thought never crossed my mind. In fact, after seeing me struggling with stress and anxiety over the state of humanity, my son once said to me, “You know Dad, I’ve figured out your problem. Instead of viewing Sisyphus as a criminal who was condemned to a lifetime of suffering due to his lack of humanity, you view him as a tragic hero.” Although I didn’t acknowledge this to Grayson at the time, I have since admitted the veracity of his observation, at least for the most part.
After I left human services I walked a different path where I discovered a much more congenial life. Myra and I bought a farm, the last place on a dead-end road, and spent our time enjoying the bucolic splendor and pastoral bliss of semi-solitude, broken only by the sounds of nature, whistling quail, cackling pheasants, and the rhythm of breezes blowing through the canopy of cottonwoods which bank the timeless waters of the South Platte River.
Life was good. There were no rocks to roll up the hill. I was at peace. But peace is elusive and may be the result of the choices we make, and while we enjoyed watching corn grow, it wasn’t all that lucrative. It was then that I was approached about the possibility of becoming a hemp farmer. Hemp had recently been legalized and there was a burgeoning market that promised a significant return on investment.
The devil is in the details. (Or perhaps, if there is a devil…) Nonetheless, I was seduced by the allure of being on the cutting edge of an agricultural revolution, or perhaps it was the 99% “guarantee,” (which if I would have thought about it a bit more, I would have realized 99% wasn’t a guarantee at all — apparently I’m a student of fuzzy math), that my investment of $100,000 would net me at least a 7-fold return, and eagerly entered into an agreement to become a hemp producer.
Much longer story shortened. My venture into hemp was an abysmal failure. I lost my initial investment, plus a little more and the “partners” that were doing the day-to-day work skedaddled leaving me with fifty some acres of black plastic strips and thousands of feet of buried drip tape.
Our fields sat fallow for a year before they were able to be farmed again, and in the meantime, we began the onerous task of black-tape removal. We tried a number of tactics including burning the field, dragging the field and pulling the drip tape into piles, and hiring crews of young people to pick up black plastic. We brought in several 30-foot roll-off dumpsters in which we placed a copious amount of black plastic.
Finally, we got an alfalfa crop growing on 25 acres, which effectively ended the black plastic saga for that plot. The remaining portion of the farm, however, remains cultivated and with every turn of the disk and every drag of the drill, buried plastic emerges. And because wind is the constant companion of the plains, said plastic is in the words of Bob Dylan, “Blowin’ in the wind.”
Each morning on our daily walk, Myra and I collect pieces of black plastic. We take pride in the looks of our farm, and it is an assault to our sensibilities to see this intrusive litter compromising the pristine beauty of nature. Every other day or so, we will “complete” a sweep of the farm, and all the obvious parcels of plastic will be securely placed within our dumpster.
Then the wind will blow, and our next walk with look like we have never removed any of the offending material at all. It feels like we roll the proverbial rock up the hill, only to see it roll back down with each weather front that moves through.
I’m relatively certain that there is a “finite” amount of debris, rather than an infinite amount, but I’m getting long in the tooth and my earthly “eternity” is fixed with an end date somewhere in the future, probably well before the last bits of black plastic have been removed.
We have an outdoor wedding venue here on the farm (no charge, we believe in marriage) and I’ve been trying to keep all the black plastic picked up so everything looks good for the impending nuptials. After a day of clean-up, things were looking good. As I glanced up the road, my heart sank, as I noted a new “patch” of black. Disgustedly I headed in that direction only to realize, as I neared, that it was just a flock of blackbirds! (Talk about PTSD!)
I’m not sure that Sisyphus and I share a common journey, but I will admit that I no longer view him as a tragic hero, but rather as someone who chose poorly. I too chose poorly, and as I gaze into the future, I see that I will (in my personal forever) be picking up black plastic reminders of that poor choice.
The good news I suppose is that Sisyphus was pushing a heavy boulder up a hill while I’m just picking up lightweight strips of a 99% guarantee!
