Knowing When to Say When

Records of the ancient Greek Olympics speak of phenomenal long jump distances of 40 or 50 feet by some of those naked Greek Olympians you’ve heard about. For many years it was widely accepted that the distances were simply false; nothing but fables designed to glorify the Greek athlete to future generations.

Then some -ologist found some interesting rocks and came up with a theory.

He had been digging around in Greece and found several pairs of large stones with what appeared to be handles carved in them. One thought lead to another and this is what the guy figured out: The stones were used by the long-jumpers who would run with a large stone in each hand. At the point of takeoff, while still holding the stones, they would thrust both hands in front of them in an upward swinging motion. The added momentum from the heavy stones would then carry them farther than they could have jumped without them.

The only problem with this theory came when test athletes were unable to duplicate the historic distances using the described method. But that all changed when one of the athletes had a brainstorm. He attempted jumping with the stones, but at the apex of his leap he swung both arms quickly backwards and cast the stones behind him as hard as he could. This action propelled him several yards farther than any of the athletes had jumped on previous attempts. With practice, several of the athletes were soon matching the distances recorded in the ancient records.

When I heard about this interesting discovery, it reminded me of something I experienced while living in Sweden many years ago.

A kind Swedish family who lived near a lake had been feeding a family of swans for several weeks. The two adult swans had been raising three cygnets (baby swans) all summer, but the Swedish winter was setting in. None of the family of swans would leave because one of the cygnets had deformed wings and could not fly. I told the Swedish family that if the swans did not fly soon, they would freeze in the forming ice and die.

When they asked what I thought they should do, I told them that I thought the cygnet with the deformed wings would have to be killed. The family bond of swans is so strong that the two adults and the other two cygnets would stay and freeze to death rather than leave the deformed cygnet alive and alone. The family scoffed at my suggestion and continued feeding the swans, hoping they would fly south before the lake began freezing.

About a week later, one of the family’s neighbors came upon the poor deformed cygnet barely alive, frozen in the ice. The other four swans were close by but had managed to free themselves by beating the ice with their strong wings. Mercifully, the neighbor shot the cygnet. The next morning, the family of four swans left the lake, flying south for winter.

So what do these stories have to do with anything?

Well, I’m not going to claim they are metaphors. And if they are, they are far from perfect. They just remind me that we all carry around things that we would be better off without. They may even be things that seem valuable, or that were once valuable; things that helped us get somewhere or achieve something, but have since become nothing more than heavy stones dragging us to the ground.

Maybe it’s that old shirt that just doesn’t look decent anymore. Maybe it’s a memory of a fight with a loved one from months ago. Maybe it’s envy or spite or fear or guilt. Whatever it is, kill it. Throw it behind you as hard as you can. In doing so you may find you propel yourself farther and faster than you ever thought possible.

A Cactus Ain't So Prickly

 Blogger's Note: The following poem is a favorite by my good friend and cowboy poet, Grizzly Hackle. It is published here with his permission.



A Cactus Ain’t So Prickly

by Grizzly Hackle

A cactus ain’t so prickly if you love it fer its thorns.

A longhorn cow’s quite lovely when y’appreciate her horns.

I’ve never found a stock pond too polluted for a dip

While on a summer cattle drive or cross-country cowboy trip.

Sometimes a girl’s purtier when her hair ain’t combed just right.

Besides, who’ll see her hair when the lights go out at night?

Sometimes it seems in life we start to noticin’ the bad

When we really should be lookin’ for the better things instead.

Don’t get me wrong. The world is full of things that ain’t so nice,

But every time I find one, I count a good thing twice.

Anyway, what good’s the summer sun ashinin’ in the sky

If you ain’t been cold and wet and wanted to be dry?

"Nadine" - The newest member of the herd.

The Miracle of Time

I don’t think I’ve ever been called a “techie.” Although I’ve spent most of my career in Sales and Product Management for technology companies, I still prefer a shovel in my hand to a cell phone. Like many people, however, I am consistently amazed at the technology that has been developed over the last 15 years or so. One of my favorites is Google Earth.

It is amazing to me that I can sit in bed with my laptop and peer down at my own house in a photo taken from a satellite orbiting miles above the earth. Then, with a few clicks on the keyboard, I can jump over to my favorite beach on Maui or my childhood home in Portland, Oregon. It is absolutely incredible!

So it has been with some techie-like anticipation that I have been waiting almost three years for Google to update the photo of my property.

Two years ago we built a new house on our little farm in Northern Utah. It replaced the manufactured home that was on the property when we bought it back in 2004. Once we moved into the new house, built just a few steps to the west of the existing home, the little double-wide was ingloriously cut open like a trout and hauled away in two pieces to take on its new calling as a cabin in the mountains of Wyoming. I do not miss it and neither, it seems, does Google.

Two weeks ago I pulled up Google Earth and clicked on our address. To my delight I zoomed in and found an updated photo of our property that includes the new house. Even more delightful was the fact that I could tell from the picture the day on which it was taken – June 18th, 2010.

Take a look. See the green truck with a red trailer parked in the driveway just south of the garden. That truck and trailer were only parked in my driveway on June 18th. It was the day I hauled goats to the fairgrounds for our annual Utah Dairy Goat Association goat show. The only other time the trailer was attached to the truck in my driveway was at night on the 19th, and clearly it is very much daytime in the photo.

Neat, huh?

But as I looked further, I found something even more interesting. The vegetable garden (that big patch of dirt with some faintly visible rows and mounds in the lower left of the photo) was still almost entirely bare in the picture. But how could this be? I had been watering the garden and pulling weeds earlier in the day and it looked nothing like that.

The day I found the new picture on Google Earth was just over four weeks from the day it was taken. By the time I saw the photo, I had already cut Swiss chard once and it was growing a second crop. The corn had tassels and was as tall as I am, the sunflowers even taller. Tomatoes and squash were setting fruit. The Zucchini was tumbling out of the garden as if off a production line. How was it possible that four weeks earlier the garden was almost bare? It took me a few minutes to justify the picture taken just a few weeks before with the current state of the garden.

Then it settled on my mind. It was simple. It was the miracle of time. When comparing the picture with the actual garden, the change seemed miraculous. In the same way you are amazed at the change when you run into someone who was years younger the last time you saw them, I just couldn’t quite believe how the garden had changed in the four weeks since the photo was taken.

If I were to take a sunflower seed and place it in the dirt on a Friday night, would you believe me if I told you that by the next morning it had grown to be a plant of 7 feet tall? Of course not. So why does it not amaze us that the exact same thing happens, but just takes a little longer, as a matter of fact?

A broken arm healed in an instant is an unexplainable miracle. A broken arm healed in 8 weeks is . . . well . . . it just is. A boy grown to be a man overnight a la the movie Big is Hollywood fiction. If it happens over ten years, we don’t think to be amazed. You get the idea.

Take time out of the equation, and you often get what we can only call miracles.

So be patient. Wounds will heal. Pain will subside. Troubles will pass. Things will change in miraculous ways – with the passing of time.