Swiss rolls in the valley

In Oregon, in the expansive valley under a big sky and with fields seemingly edged by mountains, we often see in late summer and early fall bales of hay.  As if aliens plopped them overnight in neat little bundles that are either rectangular or round.

It was not difficult to understand why hay would be compressed into rectangular bundles.  It would be easy to stack them up in a barn.  On the other hand, round bales use up space inefficiently with space between.

The fact that there were farmers preferring round bales by itself means that there is an advantage that they were tapping into.  What is it?

We have often pondered over this.  We don't know if others care about it.  The couple of people we asked, because we thought they knew something more about farming than we do--and I know nothing--shrugged it off as farmers' preferences.

But that answer never satisfied us.

If we observe and not merely look, we are flooded with questions like this.  Observations lead to understanding the world. 

I am glad that there are people who not only observe but also spend their lifetimes answering the questions that arise.  Had astronomers not observed the sky, we would not have understood how much we are made of cosmic dust.  Had natural scientists not observed life all around, we would have continued to assert that a divine being made us humans in his image, and that our existence is unrelated to monkeys and crocodiles.

Though it has become second nature to search the web for answers to questions, profound or trivial they may be, we did not engage in any Google-based research into rectangular versus round bales of hay. Perhaps because we love thinking about it while being fascinated with the sight of bales and bales of hay.

Naipaul's Enigma of Arrival is a rather unconventional novel in that it is more meditations on what he observes and less about the plot and characters.  Observations that often compare the physical geography and people in the countryside outside of Salisbury and a few miles from the Stonehenge, with Trinidad where Naipaul was born.  

And he observes a lot.  

He observes rectangular and round bales of hay!

In a poetic manner that is also a beautiful description, Naipaul refers to the round ones as "the Swiss rolls" and he asks:

What was the point of the Swiss rolls?  Was there an advantage over the traditional bales?

I did not expect this in the novel!

Reading fiction in which the author comments about life is never about entertainment.  In the early years, the Russian works that I read in translation appealed to me for the very reason that through the story the authors had a lot to say about life and the human condition.  A recent work that I read by a brown author, in contrast, had very little layering on top of telling the story.

Of course, the Swiss rolls of hay is about a rather trivial aspect of life.  But it is a lot of small aspects of life too that add up to the meaning that we make of our fleeting existence. 

So, why the Swiss rolls anyway?

Naipaul writes:

I never knew until years later, when this section of my life was closed.  The bales, tightly banded by the baling machines, had to be broken into by hand and then spread out for the cattle.  The big rolls had simply to be unrolled; a machine did the job in minutes.