 |
Making
things happen - with integrity. A weekly CyberMemo designed to keep you on task. Monday, July 17, 2000 Volume II Number 29
|
FOCUS - The Beaver, the Explorer and the Corps of Engineers
We can make our lives as complicated as we wish. But at the end of the day, it really is not as complicated as we may like to think. Thomas Chalmers, the nineteenth century preacher, identified one of the “Grand Essentials” in finding happiness in the human life… he proposed that we simply need something to do.
Author John Eldredge claims that most people are driven to busy-ness by a fear of boredom.
Dorothy Sayers said that we should not live to work, but rather work to live.
We all want to devote our energies to meaningful, purposeful work. The kind that demands our best effort. The kind that sets us apart from the crowd. We are committed to quality and excellence. Whenever it is we hang it up (retire), we want to look back and see a collective body of work that will set a new standard. Leave the world a better place. Fill us with a sense of pride. We want it to be self-evident - that enormous effort was worth it after all.
But give me a break. It’s summer time.
Hopefully, the livin’ is easy. Fish are jumpin’ and the cotton is high. I trust that during these summer days you are finding a place to escape the pressure, even for a little while. Back up the hard drive and shut down the computer. Let the e-mail pile up. No more loggin’ in. Put a message on the voice mail that says, “Later. You won’t be able to find me. Don’t bother trying. I’m out of reach – the cell phone doesn’t even pick up a signal, the pager’s turned off and I won’t be calling in for messages. It’ll have to wait. Deal with it. Thank you for calling, and, Goodbye.” Then punch in the code that cuts ‘em off before the recorder starts – you know, the code that prevents those predictable sorts who will ignore your plea for temporary freedom and leave an “urgent message” anyway… the kind of voice mail that makes you feel guilty for taking a break. The kind that causes you to delay your departure. The kind that prevents you from reading that good book or messin’ around with your kids or communicating with your spouse or takin’ an afternoon nap. You’ve gotta shut it down. Tune those other people out.
Put up a sign on the door that says, “Gone Fishin’.”
That’s what I did.
* * * * * * * * * * *
When I heard that my native southern California gets it’s water from the Colorado River, I always pictured one of those mid-west muddy rivers, meandering around the bend with a swift current. Like the rivers from my childhood. The Fox River, or the Chicago River or even the mighty Mississippi… Old Man River… just keeps rollin’ along. And there in my mind was the Colorado, red from iron oxide silt. Los Angeles dips in a big pipe, sucks out water like a straw, and draws enough to supply a huge metropolis, home to ten million residents, countless industries, and harbors and manufacturing plants, and amusement parks (including those water parks), filling swimming pools (public and private) and turning an arid desert into an agricultural center that has become a world wonder. Not to mention lawns and gardens and golf courses and the elimination of rivers of waste.
It’d have to be a mighty big straw, I thought.
That was my mental picture. I’d never seen Fleming Gorge, or Lake Mohave, or Lake Mead… or Lake Powell.
They aren’t lakes, really. The Colorado River, over the centuries… even millennia… cut through canyons over rising continental shelves, creating huge natural reservoirs. But these tubs were dry. They were bowls all right. Dust bowls. Parched by the merciless heat and sun of the Western deserts.
Farmers must “make do.” They have always looked for ways to move the earth around, stopping up water flows and filling up reservoirs with water that would otherwise run down the hill. They follow the lead of the industrious beaver. Building dams. It decreased a farmer’s dependence on those unpredictable rains. If he could just store a large enough reserve, he could deliver the water to his crops when they need it. He could monitor just the proper amounts. It would increase production… and more important, take out the element of chance. Irrigation. No more need for the rain dance.
I wish I was there when that first group of engineers stood on the cliff at the edge of Manson Mesa, overlooking the thousand foot deep canyon, two opposite sheer faces all the way down to the rapids of the Colorado River, narrowing at the base, tumbling white water rapids over massive boulders when one of them turned to the other and said, “You know, if we fill this thing up with concrete, we could back up a whole lot of water.”
I wonder about things like that. Who were the first guys to make these modest little proposals? And at the time, did they have any idea of how enormous might be the results of their little suggestion?
Today, the massive Glen Canyon Dam, a tiny dot on the map, holds back a one hundred eighty-three mile long lake. Incredible.
* * * * * * *
At Hall’s Crossing, first thing Monday morning, fourteen of us took possession of a fifty-three foot long houseboat. “MYACHT” and “Lake Powell” and “Y14” are painted on the side in big bold letters.
Outside the marina, from the captain’s
chair, I took the radio, tuned in to channel sixteen and said “Hello
Hall’s Landing. This is
Houseboat Y16 requesting a radio check.” (Static.)
“Houseboat Y14, I read you loud and clear,” (static) came the answer of a pleasant sounding woman from some unknown place on the shoreline.
And that was the signal… vacation’s official start. All the rest… the packing, the hitching, the mapping, the fueling, the loading… all preparation. But this was it. We were floating down Bullfrog Bay under power towards our private little beachfront hideaway just off Good Hope Bay.
Buzzing around the houseboat were young people on Wave-Runners, in a state of excitement that parents hope for. They chased down buoy numbers, poked around canyons and caves looking for diving rocks. Jumped over wakes. Screamed those delightful little laughter screams that make you know… this is gunna be good.
* * * * * * *
John Wesley Powell, fascinated by the immense grandeur of the West, read books and explored canyons, and kept his own scientific notes. His sketches and maps survive to this day, and tell the story of uninhabitable vast expanses and geological structures and small people groups eking out a survival in the arid desserts and steep walls of crumbling sandstone cliffs, sheer faces painted deep red and yellow and gray.
The chimney rocks fascinated him. Some leaning precariously away from the rest, ominously tilting to one side, as though at any moment this one might be the next to fall, crashing into the valley floor… like so many that had fallen before. “Would this one over me be the next to tumble?” he wondered. The valleys were littered by the broken remnants of other massive chimney rocks, smaller chunks of sandstone, and rocks and sand, now lying forever in a state of crumbled ruin.
And the rapids of the Colorado. The Mississippi had it’s own quiet, powerful nobility. But nothing of the sheer drama, the danger, the exhilaration of the mighty Colorado with its twists and turns and color. The canyons and the plains, the white water dancing. The challenge of the journey.
For John Wesley Powell, it was irresistible.
Powell, an abolitionist, was distracted by the Civil War. He joined forces with the Union Army. Powell was self-educated. By the time he reached the front lines, he had mastered a library of books on military strategy and tactics, the history of the great battles of antiquity and the character of the heroes of warfare. He was articulate and charismatic. General Ulysses S. Grant quickly promoted him to Commander of Artillery.
On the front lines, fighting shoulder to shoulder with his comrades, he lost an arm to a flying cannonball.
* * * * * * * * * *
“Ever see the movie Water World?” one of the guys asked me as he revved the Wave Runner in neutral, bobbing up and down near the deck of the houseboat.
“Yeah, as a matter of fact, I did,” was my reply.
“Bad movie,” he said. “But those were really cool scenes on the Wave Runners, huh?” Then he pulled it in gear and hit the throttle. The nose of his water motorcycle rose up, the power of the jet nozzle churned up the water behind him, the rooster tail shot up to the sky, and off he went in a big white spray. All I could hear was the throaty roar of the Yamaha and a loud whoop and a holler “YES!” and off he went, jumpin’ a wave.
This sure beats sittin’ at the desk, I thought.
* * * * * * * * *
On May 24, 1869, John Wesley Powell, a one armed Civil War Veteran, led a team of explorers down the entire length of the Colorado River in three row boats. The Colorado’s flow starts high in the Rocky Mountains where snow and ice melts under the springtime sun at fourteen thousand feet. Hundreds of tributaries and creeks and rivers join down the slopes until the Colorado gathers them all and transports water and silt nearly fifteen hundred miles through Glen Canyon and the Grand Canyon down to the Gulf of California. Powell’s team started in a Wyoming tributary and rode the river and rapids for the distance.
By the time he arrived at the river’s end, only five of his party remained. Four of the team members deserted, complaining of hardship. They quit. Three others were killed in a skirmish with the Shivwita Indians, who attacked them late one night.
Powell’s determination only intensified. He would not be deterred. He completed his notes. He made a second trip in 1871.
He penned the definitive work, the first real textbook on Glen Canyon and the Colorado River.
* * * * * * * * *
The Glen Canyon Dam Project began in 1957. As urban areas in the West sprawled outward, the need for fresh water multiplied exponentially. The dam site is remote… one hundred forty miles from the nearest railroad line in Flagstaff Arizona. Every yard of concrete arrived on the back of a truck. It took three full years, twenty-four hours a day seven days a week, to pour.
The dam rises seven hundred and ten feet above the river. At the top, it spans the gorge, one thousand five hundred and sixty feet.
On March 13, 1963, the flow of the Colorado was cut off. The water started to accumulate. It took three full years. The surface of the lake rose to an elevation of three thousand seven hundred feet.
The water filled canyons and gorges, backing up creek beds, against sheer rock faces, covering up boulders and chimney rocks and caves and arches. By project’s end, the lake reached back a full one hundred eighty-three miles.
The shoreline, up and down canyons like Escalante and the San Juan River and Forgotten Canyon and Sevenmile Canyon and Spencer Camp and Bullfrog Creek is more than one thousand nine hundred miles. The lake holds back twenty seven million acre-feet of precious fresh water. In some places, it’s over a thousand feet deep.
A farmer’s dream. A beaver’s dream. A city’s dream.
They named it Lake Powell. For John Wesley Powell.
* * * * * *
Fourteen people vacationed on our floating hotel this week. We beached our craft in a little inlet off Good Hope Bay… we slept on the upper deck under the stars and a nearly full moon on the warm Utah nights. Our resident high school biology teacher gave us lessons on the stars and the constellations and some classical mythology. We watched satellites transverse the velvet black sky, and caught the reflection of sheer rock cliffs in the moonlight on the smooth, still water.
Three families were represented. A citrus grower. A church leader. A dental hygienist. Three hard workin’ moms. Three public school teachers, one high school the two others elementary school. Several are musicians. A soon to be Physical Therapist. A couple of college students, one a senior, the other an entering freshman. A high school girl with nine bathing suits… and a junior higher who climbs rocks and beats out a mean rhythm on the lid of a powdered Gatorade can.
We skied. And explored the nooks and crannies of the canyons. We hiked. Scoped out the ruins of the ancient Anasazi cliff dwellers. The kneeboard and the inflated tube got lots of wear. We burned up a whole lot of marine fuel.
But the best part was pulling together at night and talking about the Creator of it all. As far away as we are from the world we know, He seems as present as ever.
So we talked about His Word. Sang worship songs. And all in all, felt blessed.
We talked about the people who taught us to know Him as our friend. We committed together to keep the flame alive and to pass the torch to the generations to come.
* * * * * * * *
You are a leader. It’s another Monday morning… smack dab in the middle of summer.
Maybe you’ve already had your getaway. I hope your batteries got recharged, and you’re ready to get back to building your career. Adding value to your organization. Meeting the needs of the marketplace. Serving your people. Honing your skills.
Maybe your holiday is still ahead. Make sure you cut the rest of your life off. Don’t let the breakdowns, the things you forgot to pack, the surprise and unbudgeted expenses, the annoying lack of competence in the employees who are supposed to be there to serve you, the unrealized expectations, the “urgent message,” the flashes of anger and disappointment…. Don’t let any of these overcome the joy and wonder and refreshment of the open air and the clear skies and refreshing waters of vacation.
Sleep in. Read a book. Push the envelope physically. Let your muscles get sore. Be reminded that you still have them, and they work. Let the sunshine penetrate. Hug your kid(s). Your spouse. Your traveling companions. Watch the sunset. Take a nap. Jump right in the water. Write in your journal.
“There is a balm in Gilead…” Let it bring healing. Restoration. Laughter. Wholeness. Take it in.
You earned it.
© Copyright Kenneth E. Kemp 2000
Special Thanks to my good friend David Belcher, owner of Rhino Media Group and creator of WisdomGram
LeaderFOCUS is a service of Good Stewardship Associates
|
|