Focus, focus, focus

At May 09, 2012
By Nathan
In Career & Life Planning, Meeting Needs
0

Setting up my tiny tent on a sandbar on the edge of a large creek in the Rocky Mountains seemed like a good idea at the time.

Sand was soft, and so this site was very attractive. There were very few annoying rocks to deal with. Pounding in the tent pegs was no problem at all. On top of that, the surface was flat. And it would be peaceful to be surrounded by water and quiet too. The noisy campers over there on the hard, rocky, ground wouldn’t keep me awake after all.

Yes, I had finally found the perfect place to get a good night’s rest. Don dug a hole in order to find soft, level, ground for his tent. Surely this campsite idea was an improvement on that. Or so I thought.

The first few nights it was peaceful to fall asleep listening to the water all around me. And it was beautiful to wake up on the island in the morning and see the sunlight reflecting on the river rushing by. But after awhile anxiety set in. An old camp song began to play over and over again in my mind. It wouldn’t quit.

“Don’t build your house on a sandy land. Don’t build it too near the shore. Oh, it might look kind of nice, but you’ll have to build it twice. You’ll have to build your house once more.”

And then it began to rain. Not much, mind you; but enough every now and then to make me wonder if my temporary island home was still going to be there at the end of the day. As a safety precaution I planted a stake at the water’s edge. A lot of good that would do if it really started to rain. But I checked it faithfully morning and evening in order to monitor the water level and attempt to ease my mind.

One day, the stake was gone. Was it washed away?

There was a bridge a few hundred meters downstream. A mountain high above and a bridge below. A few years back, when I had been working in another remote part of the Rockies, it started to rain and wouldn’t stop. It got to the point that we had to get out. We had to quickly try to get to civilization while a few roads and bridges were still around. Memories of submerged trucks and washed out roads…and missing bridges still lingered.

Dan, a young man from my home town, didn’t notice that the bridge was gone until it was too late.

Sober memories. Incessant songs. And then I remembered Luke.

Luke was a little boy who liked to play a certain game in his back yard in Vancouver, BC. He played it over and over again. It was called, “Waging wiver.” That is how Luke said it, anyway. It worked like this: Luke would set up all of his green plastic army guys in the sand box, and then get the garden hose. A child’s game but a startling image nonetheless.

Thankfully, I was able to make it to the mainland before the “wiver” began to “wage.”

Location, location, location: three words to keep in mind if you are looking for a good place to live or even pitch a tent for awhile. And if you are presently pondering your career and life direction, it wouldn’t hurt to consider three more.