Putting Big Sticks by Little Sticks (eBook)

Finding My Path as a Land Surveyor

Ronald J. Nelms (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2021 | 1. Auflage
222 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-6678-2130-6 (ISBN)

Infos

'Putting Big Sticks by Little Sticks' is about the journey we all take to find where we belong. It all begins in our formative years. As he gives us a peek into his professional life and the fulfillment he's found in his career, Ron Nelms retraces his path from childhood adventures to the challenges and tragedies of young adulthood and, ultimately, discovery of the personal gifts that led him to the professional love of his life: land surveying. Ron invites you to follow him on his path to becoming a land surveyor. Perhaps his story will give you the chance to reflect on your own passions and desires, perhaps this could be your chance to reignite your direction in the pursuit of fulfillment. It is never too late to put a life together - to find meaning and purpose that leads to feeling victorious about having lived.

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"e;Putting Big Sticks by Little Sticks"e; is about the journey we all take to find where we belong. It all begins in our formative years. As he gives us a peek into his professional life and the fulfillment he's found in his career, Ron Nelms retraces his path from childhood adventures to the challenges and tragedies of young adulthood and, ultimately, discovery of the personal gifts that led him to the professional love of his life: land surveying. Ron invites you to follow him on his path to becoming a land surveyor. Perhaps his story will give you the chance to reflect on your own passions and desires, perhaps this could be your chance to reignite your direction in the pursuit of fulfillment. It is never too late to put a life together - to find meaning and purpose that leads to feeling victorious about having lived. "e;Putting Big Sticks by Little Sticks"e; is more than a story about a land surveyor who found his passion. It's a memoir of a boy and his dog, brotherly love, and the mischievous adventures that call to those anxious to explore woods, hills, abandoned mines and ladybug dens. It's a story of family resilience, trust, and faith, and the role each has had in Ron's life. Youth is short-lived, and little boys enjoy precious few years of carefree play and exploration before getting to the task of school, growing up, and starting a family and career. If they're lucky, they will find a life's work that fills them up, bringing both joy and pride, all while being a "e;servant to others,"e; as Ron describes his work and the responsibility that comes with it. Ron Nelms is one of the lucky ones. Life as a professional land surveyor has been his dream come true. No matter what your personal calling may be, Ron's story inspires us to lean into our God given gifts and to put them to work in our life.

Textauszug

1

Early Explorations

“Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas.”

– “Fortunate is he who understands the cause of things.”

For virtually all normal persons there appear within, affinities and talents that seek, perhaps await, attention and expression. We have to grow a bit before they begin to reveal themselves in a meaningful manageable way. They may show up early in life. Many magicians were child prodigies. The meaning and nature of gifts press upon us for recognition and cultivation. They are a part of us and influence our lives to some degree even when we do not recognize them. When they are rightly understood and managed, they are enlarged. Neglected they tend to fall away. Sometimes others see gifts in us and we do not.

Cultivated, human gifts enlarge, and become more meaningful, more fulfilling. Some mentoring, especially in the involvement of parents, moves matters along with helpful dispatch. This is commonly illustrated in the accomplishment of athletes in the Olympics (and elsewhere) when parents and coaches are often honored for what they contributed in the lives of masterful young men and women showing physical prowess. Both the mentor and the athlete seem to have improved the other in some way. Approval from respected persons in our lives, in the maturing process, inspires improvement. It is key to effective parenting. We sometimes call it mentoring. It is a special relationship. It is another way to reproduce ourselves.

Human affinities long to be expressed. Often they are repressed either by the individual or by others in the contexts of life. Many a young person has been told he or she will not amount to anything. Some parents invite their children to defeat. Efforts are discouraged. Attempts are aborted. Young persons may turn to some of their peers in using time for lesser purposes and activities, shallow for the hidden potential, and less satisfying to their view of life and the world. Some may juggle with dreams for a lifetime, perhaps fritter their talents away. Others know early on and press for fulfillment of some meaningful vision. Some follow through, activating themselves toward their dreams and felt abilities. A young person is blessed when parents and/ or mentors enter into his or her life in a way to advance the achievement of constructive dreams. The helper lowers barriers, and strengthens to some degree the protégé who must accomplish the better part of the possibilities. Some parents see the spark in their children - and water it. Others find some fuel for the flame. They may make possibilities into probabilities.

For me the dream came early, even if it was a bit murky - as it usually is for a child. Now, reflecting back, I see the early seeds of my dreams. I discovered I wanted something that would give me adventure. Some persons never find a spark for their lives. No one shows up to encourage and advance the search. We know that there are persons who have felt a drive, but nothing came of the first evidences of affinities looking toward gifts of wisdom or resources and developed skills needed to accomplish a dream. I wanted to look beyond the limits I felt were the outlines of current life. Was there something yet to conquer? Who lives over there? What treasure may be found? How does one get there? What does everything look like in places I have never been? It was a thirst for exploration and adventure, both near and far, both in fantasy and reality. The thoughts did not reach beyond possibilities. Dreams are not all fantasies. They can become the inspiration to life’s journey.

My earliest recall, at the age of four, relates to standing in our family living room ruminating about a painting mounted on the wall. I now know that I was taken by the oblique view of a cliff surrounded by trees of pine and cedar. The rendition was at odds with my environment. Our home fronted on a side street that ran parallel to the main highway from the Central Valley to Grass Valley in the mountains of California. My brothers and I, somewhat rebellious in childishness, were instructed firmly not to play in the back yard, so to avoid the cut bank that overlooked that busy route. In something of innocent defiance, common to kids, I set out to discover what the cliff looked like, and what discoveries might be made related to the massive project. However, the back door was locked so to bar us from the backyard, and the intrusive highway. I was never fully free to make my foray to that frontier. I was infected with desire that was intensified by a locked door.

The route to adventure was blocked. I pondered the painting in the front room. It seemed to me the secret to my venture might be hidden there. Although no answer came to me at the time, I was somewhat comforted that the cut bank and the oblique cliff of the painting were related - at least for my thoughts. To find the secret to the one might provide the secret to the other. Why would the cut-bank be bad, and the cliff be worthy of an honored place on our wall? I wanted to know what was back of this extension, and the mystery of the locked door and forbidden yard - a yard that grown-ups might use on occasion through a guarded door. There had to be an answer. To satisfy my yearning I made the painting to be the cut-bank, and permitted it to become my answer. My yearning about exploring the cut-bank was unrequited in reality. My urgings had to be muted, but they were real. Adventure was beginning in my imagination.

In family course, we moved to Union Hill, a mountain community east of Grass Valley. The beauties of the cliff painting suddenly looked real, and may have accounted for some of my memory, imagining about the cut-bank, a mere symbol for real beauty in nature. I became more aware of reality in the passing of time. With some bravado, and growing in both body and perceptions I announced to my mother that I was going to explore our new location. Our dog, Peanut, would be my companion. The safer community environment and my growing-up were enough for her to set me free, at least for the present. She was not privy to my plans. She didn’t ask.

Peanut and I took off through the woods behind our recently acquired but modest home. The dog seemed brave enough and so was I. Exploration began. I knew I was in my element. I was becoming what I wanted to be in some relationship with the mysteries of nature - real and imagined. Explorations continued. Each time I would look for a new trail, and master the old ones. Following each to its destination, I wondered why the trail was located here and looked for evidence of man or animal, proofs of persons or pets that traveled this way. I was intrigued, somewhat overwhelmed in my imagination of the unknown in the known.

From time to time I would find narrow slants of wood, decorated with colorful ribbons. They were sometimes irresistible. I would lift some of them out of the ground, toss them in the air, and watch the fluttering of ribbon in the fallback. I had no knowledge that these were surveyor sticks used to mark boundaries, or the perimeter of a timber sale. I wonder if I were to return to those old trails, the voices of some surveyors may be groaning at me as the ghost of old Marley groaned at Scrooge. The voices would rise from the graves in unison berating me for my disregard for the meaning of ribboned sticks. (I have been amply punished for my childish delinquency in adult life when, as a surveyor I have lost many sticks to venturesome persons taken by fluttering ribbons.) I hope the offenders were children.

On one occasion, my younger brother, Dean and I, with Peanut, trudged up a trail to the top of a cut bank. It overlooked a saw mill. Trucks moved in slow, laborious but smooth routings into and out of the area, unloading fresh and rough timber, and loading treated logs or cut lumber. The hum of the saw blades was clear, interrupted by beginnings and endings of the cutting rhythm dictated by the length of the log in transition to lumber. The sounds from the energy of the motor recited the nature and length of each log in the surgery of it. The workers seemed like a part the mechanics of the process, moving with clear purpose to the various points in the scene of the great compound. Their meaning to it all was everything to the composition of the scene. I was entranced. There was adventure in it for me.

I studied the scene in my imagination of my young mind. The composition was magnificent. We felt we had discovered some secret operation. It was reality, visited by some vision or dream that belongs to human beings. Some don’t catch it. It is a tuning into real life. Tuning in we discover something for ourselves, to contribute to our purpose on the world’s compound for self and mankind, useful for all in the context - whether highly gifted or modestly engaged. Somewhere there is something meaningful for each person. It must be sought to be made practical. We are invited to discover who we are and what we want to accomplish in life. I felt that adventure early in my dreams. I wish that a wise mentor might have caught up with meed – and Peanut.

So intriguing was the moving scene that I wanted to get closer. I stepped off the pathway, and pressed through the underbrush to a clearing only yards or so away from the mill’s activity. Going forward a bit, I slipped and my legs were pinned against and under a decaying log. The accident disturbed a nest of lady bugs. (And, hereto hangs a long tale of comparisons and contrasts in my...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 23.12.2021
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte
• ISBN-10: 1-6678-2130-X / 166782130X
• ISBN-13: 978-1-6678-2130-6 / 9781667821306