Book Review: Flying Blind: One Man's Adventures Battling Buckthorn, Making Peace with Authority, and Creating a Home for Endangered Bats by Don Mitchell
I live in an area where there is a resident bat population. On summer nights, shortly after dusk, I have watched them darting across the night sky as they forage. Their apparently random movements are the antithesis of linear, logical, and predictable behavior. At least so it appears to our unperceptive human eyes.
Like the flight of a bat, Flying Blind dips and swerves, but not without purpose. Cutting down trees requires a chainsaw, the resulting piles of wood require an ATV to haul them out of the forest. These side trips are not extraneous; they are part of the process that is needed to get from point A to point B; "... bouncing from here to there, from one topic to the next without advance warning. Much of life is lived that way, looked at from a certain angle." The bat is not zig-zagging through the sky aimlessly - it is getting dinner. We're simply looking at the bat's behavior from the wrong angle.
Mitchell begins to see the trees within the forest, individuals that are both distinct and yet cogs in a larger system. The trees, the invasive weeds, and the bats themselves each have their own niche. As Mitchell becomes immersed in the interaction of these interdependent parts, he begins to wonder how he fits into the grand scheme; what is Don Mitchell's niche? "Maybe there was a light at the end of this tunnel; maybe my efforts would eventually help the bats." Life is NOT linear, logical, or predictable; our insistence that it is leaves us all flying blind.
Flying Blind is author Don Mitchell's journey to epiphany; a story that begins with him trying to find a way to reduce the property tax burden on his Vermont farm and ending with the realization of his own place in the world.
