Sometimes the answer to a problem is found by trying to analyze our successes. In growing nut trees we may have an unusually good crop on a particular variety or tree. The question is, why does that tree bear well that particular year, and very frequently it is difficult to understand why. It is very difficult, for example, in the case of one success, to repeat that success, because the second time you try to do it, something else comes in, and you probably have a failure and, well, you don't know why. It is frequently very difficult to analyze our successes. Another way of stating it is, of course, that our successes are often Nature's gift, and we do not know the factors and the forces that go into that gift.
I want to digress here just a little bit by quoting one thing that Mr. Best said. I wish, by the way, that we could incorporate some of his homey philosophy into some of our minutes so as to really benefit by some of his remarks. I was impressed this morning by his statement in dealing with a "fairyland of nuts," you remember that language he used, "no diseases, no insects, no failures."
DR. MCKAY: Wouldn't that be wonderful? I was impressed with another thing he said; I wrote it down here: "People are not going to break down with emotion when we talk about the old hollow tree down in the corner of the pasture where the 'possums were hatched." Language like that, to me, strikes a very harmonious note. I want to continue this digression a little to consider the fact that all of us, in a sense, are hobbyists in nut growing.
Hobbies in this day and age are coming to be more important all the time, because of the fast pace at which we live. We need to leave our regular duties once in a while and get out in the garden or the forest where we can observe nature and get away from some of the stresses and strains that modern living places upon us.
On this trip we were taking a hike along the north rim of Grand Canyon in an organized nature walk. The trees, bushes and flowers were all labelled right down the walk, and we came to this little poem on a regulation label. It goes like this:
"If you keep your nose to the grindstone rough, And you keep it there long enough, You will cease to hear the birds that sing, And the brooks that babble in early spring, And finally all that your world will compose, Will be the grindstone and your poor, old nose."