What an amazing natural resource!
Bamboo has long be used around the world for a variety of applications. Here, you can find patches growing wild along many creeks and streams. Today, I had a need for some, so I stopped to harvest some impressive ones. It's amazing that this "grass" can grow so tall and strong. Personally, I wish I had more growing closer to our homestead, but we'll take what we can get.
I was amazed at how thick the bamboo forest was. A lot of the older canes had died last winter, so many twenty foot tall or better dried, brown stalks were available for harvest without harming the plant. The new green growth from this year was only eight or nine feet tall, so it'll take another year or two for it to reach the heights of its former glory. My goal is to make some arrows and possibly a bow from some of this, and see what else comes to mind with the rest. One cool thing about this particular patch of bamboo is that it is also edible. What an amazing renewable resource! Have you ever walked deep into a patch of bamboo? Here's some photos from earlier.