For some reason unknown to me I had the urge to want to watch the sun rise
over First Thought Mountain. I sort of mused to myself as I threw my sleeping
bag in the back of my truck, "I wonder what my first thoughts will be when
I wake in the morning."
Since this was at the close of a day of physical work at my cabin, I decided
to stop at the Orient Inn, or Tavern as it is best known to have a cheeseburger
and some fries for dinner. After finishing my supper, I figured I had about an
hour of daylight left, so I hoped I could find the road without much trouble.
Up the highway towards Lauier, then up Little Boulder until there was a road,
that looked all over grown and then about half a mile in, to the spot I wanted
to spent the night. As always the road is much easier to spot coming down the
mountain than going up, so before I decided that must be the road, I had driven
perhaps another half mile. After finding a place to turn around, I returned to
the spot and edged off the main road onto what looks like a completely
abandoned trail. "The brush is thicker than it was the last time I was in
here", I thought as the wispy branches of the alder scratched along the
side of my truck. "I'm sure glad she isn't new anymore, because if she was
I would want to walk in, to save the paint."
Finally, just as I remembered, about a half mile off the road I entered the
clearing and I was in a small quarry of sorts. Boulders or blocks of almost
pure quartz crystals, slightly larger than kernels of corn, all fused together
into what looks to be a huge deposit. The sun was really beginning to set now,
so I figured I better find a place to sleep soon. When I had left the cabin I
had decided to use the stars for my tent, because no rain was expected, perhaps
till fall. But as I opened the back of the truck I saw that I had forgotten to
throw in any kind of sleeping pad. "Oh, well. It might be a fitful nights
sleep up on that rocky ridge, especially if I can't find a place, with a little
soil or something to soften up the hard rock. After all pure quartz has a
hardness of 8, with diamond being a 10 hardness. This is sure going to be a
night at the Hard Rock Hotel unless the Lord provides."
As I passed through the maze of pure white boulders and reached the mass of
the unbroken formation, I was again aware of the massive scratches running
north and south, still plainly visible after these many centuries. This whole
area was covered with the continental ice sheet during the ice age, and those
scratches in this pure rock is still only covered with a thin layer of moss and
lichens.
As I reached the top of the ridge, the sun had fully set behind the Kettle
River Range to my back. To the east was First Thought Mountain with the Kettle
River between us now beginning to be lost in the deepening twilight. "Now
to find a place to lay my sleeping bag, some soft spot, where I can still gaze
at the stars. What's that over there, it looks sort of like someone many years
ago built a browse bed there." Right out there in a small depression on
the ridge was sort of a square area perhaps big enough for two people to sleep.
Perhaps ten feet away, facing the river was what looked to be a fire circle,
from one huge bonfire. "Hey there is a small piece of burnt wood, and what
looks like some remains of charcoal. Someone build a fire here a long time ago
- and probably slept over there just like I'm planning to do. Perhaps I can
find some wood for a fire too."
Looking around, I spied a small sapling that looked like it had succumbed to
the forces of nature a couple of seasons ago. Perfectly seasoned and just the
right size to be one nights fire wood and still small enough to be broken into
pieces by jumping on the trunk. "I'm sure living right tonight!"
Within minutes the fire was ablaze and my sleeping bag was laid out for a
restful nights sleep. "Life is good!" While it was now dark, through
the fire light I now noticed a little farther down the ridge what looked has if
it was once a stone cairn. It was made up of some of the boulders from the
quarry. There was also what looked like a well decayed wooden box and some kind
of tin can. Picking up the parts of the can, I returned to the fire to inspect
it. It was the remains of an old Prince Albert tobacco can. I could still make
out, right along side the Prince himself the words, crimp cut, long burning,
pipe and cigarette tobacco. Net wt. 14 oz. "I wonder who did this, and
when?"
As I sat by the fire I began to make up all sorts of interesting stories.
About 10 o'clock I got tired of speculating and the small tree was now only
carbon dioxide and water vapor. It had been a long day. I decided to get some
sleep. With the stars in this moon less night providing an aura of light you
cannot imagine in the city, within a few minutes I was sound asleep.
Suddenly I was wide awake, I thought I heard someone talking. No, it just
must have been my imagination. The creation of my mind after speculating about
the building of this magnificent campsite. Making sure that I was only
dreaming, I checked my watch, 1:30. Another four hours and I will begin to see
the sun rise over First Thought. I drifted back into dream land.
John Justin was a visionary sort of guy, a fisherman by trade, he was known
around town as the "Big Fisherman". He used to make his living by
catching and canning the mighty Chinook as they fought their way over Kettle
Falls of the mighty Columbia, a few miles below the mouth of the Kettle River,
probably 25 miles or so from here. John had a small acreage just at the mouth
of the Kettle and on the shore of the Columbia. He use to make a really good
living, even through the depression, because a lot of the Indians also brought
their fish to John to be put into those tin cans of his. Canned salmon could
last for years. Now that had taken on new importance, because the early stages
of the construction of Grand Coulee Dam a hundred miles or so down stream, had
just cut off all the salmon runs forever.
Paul Grace, didn't live many miles from John as the crow flies, but his
place on the other side of the Columbia on Marcus Flats, was almost a days
journey by horse. Because the Columbia was quite swift in the neighborhood of
the Kettle Falls, crossing the river there was not something you wanted to do
for most of the year. But the new bridge had helped. Paul had an small orchard
but supplemented his income from gold mining. Every year, sometime in mid
summer, Paul would disappear into the woods for a couple of weeks and return
with a stake to keep the farm running through the winter and to buy seed for
spring planting. Paul was from back east somewhere, New York or Boston. Not too
handsome, some of the local rumors stated that Paul might be a Jew, because of
his ability to find gold, but no one in the whole county had ever seen a real
Jew, so Paul was just accepted for who he was. A hard working, caring family
man who was always willing to help someone in need.
The Justin's and the Grace's became close after meeting at some revival
services held in Meyers Falls in 1922. The meetings were held by an evangelist
from Spokane by the name of Jonathan Lake. The Reverend Lake was quite well
known in the area at the time, because of some of the ministry's documented
healings that had appeared in the Spokesman Review. But soon after this Meyers
Falls Revival, he had sort of went off the deep end, and the last anyone knew
he was now living somewhere in California disgraced and unknown.
In the spring of '29 there was a bad epidemic of flu, and both John's and
Paul's wives succumbed the same day to the outbreak. After that the two were
best of friends. As widowers with children of about the same age, they
definitely had some things in common. John's son had moved to Seattle to work
for some new airplane company named Boeing, his daughter was one of the early coeds
at Washington State College and had married a rich wheat farmer from Colfax.
Paul had three sons and Paul was able to send them back east for their
education and they never returned.
When plans were finally in place for the construction of the Coulee Dam
during the depression, both John and Paul knew that their lives were about to
change again forever. Both of their homes were going to be drown under the
reservoir of the dam. They would have to move and change there whole lives. It
was about that time some say that the two of them began wandering the hills
together. Together they found this quartz deposit up Little Boulder and tried
to figure out what to do with it. At first they thought it might be loaded with
gold, as a lot of quartz is, but if there was any to be had, it wasn't of
commercial quality. From the quarry, or pit as they called it, they could look
over the valley and see First Thought Mountain and its commercial mining
operation and contemplate what might have been.
As the Coulee Dam neared completion John and Paul spent more time up at the
pit, as much to contemplate their future as to try to figure out something to
do with their beautiful pile of rocks. The best they could come up with was to
slice it into thin slices and use it to make lamp shades and pretty windows,
perhaps staining it for church windows. But the only thing that would really
cut stone that hard was diamond. They knew that in their lifetime that would
not be economically feasible. With John as the lead visionary they began to
contemplate a world that might one day be.
Paul began to take John on his mining excursions. While many people tried to
follow them, as they had tried to follow Paul earlier, the two would always
give them the slip somewhere up Pingston Creek, on the slopes of Gold hill,
above Meyers Falls. When they would return a few weeks later, all either one
would say was, "There's gold in them there hills!" One of the things
that frustrated the local trackers, was that Paul had trained his goats to
follow him into the wilderness. Since the tracks of the goats and their
droppings looked just like deer, once Paul and John were lost from visual
contact, they were impossible to follow. In any event when they would return,
both men would have a good enough polk of gold to last them for the year.
Once they got there money from the government for their land Paul and John,
now well into middle age, decided to rent a house together in Meyers Falls.
Since they were continually writing about their thoughts for the future of the
world, it seemed like the best thing to do. One of the most interesting things
about this era was that Meyers Falls, the town founded by Luther Meyers in the
previous century, was being taken over by the town of Kettle Falls from down on
the Columbia. While the house they were living in was built in Meyers Falls,
and had always stood in Meyers Falls, one day in 1939 it was going to become a
house in Kettle Falls. Meyers Falls had just disappeared, into what John called
virtual reality. The town was still there, the people were still there,
everything appeared the same, only Meyers Falls was no more. The town of Kettle
Falls was now reality.
In the summer after the name change, both John and Paul decided it was time
to go see some of the bigger world. They each bought a new car and after
selling their remaining household goods decided to spend the rest of the summer
up at the pit. They both felt that it was important to work out a vision that
they could both pursue for the remainder of their lives, even though they may
never see one another again. They set up the tent in a little depression on the
ridge above the pit and every night they would start a fire on the hard quartz
rock and talk about a new world that they believed would one day come into being.
In a sense they believed in a new creation, being created out of the existing
world, even though they couldn't see it they knew for some reason that it was
just as real as the great north to south scratches the glaciers had made on the
ridge formation.
As John continued to outline his vision, Paul kept notes in a leather
journal. For many days the title page was blank. But that didn't stop John from
talking about this new world order. He was quite sure that this was not
something that their remaining life's work would accomplish, perhaps just a
beginning. It was not to be heaven on earth, but more a vision of a new earth
with nothing but good news. One August morning after their breakfast of
oatmeal, bacon and coffee, Paul said, "Why don't we name it the Meyers
Falls Community, in some virtual state or country. We could use the Greek
oikos, for dwelling place, along with the virtual concept and name the whole
place Meyers Falls, Oikosvirtual."
John responded, "That's it Paul, Meyers Falls, Oikosvirtual and the
name of this journal is the Good News Report, as will be the local Meyers Falls
paper. Nothing but good news. Even in bad news there is always some good to
report, if you search for it. With times like we have just gone through, we
sure would have liked to read some good news, even if it comes from some town
we can't see and will never ever visit."
Paul wrote on the cover page of the journal, "Good News Report; Meyers
Falls, Oikosvirtual." With that, they placed the journal in a gold metal
box they had made, and sealed it with wax. They then placed the golden box in a
Prince Albert can, and put that all in small wooden box. Finally, they packed
stones from the pit and built a cairn over their testimony, hoping one day that
someone would come and read and understand their vision. They took down their
tent deciding to spend their last night together under the tent of the heavens,
with the stars for inspiration. After supper they built a great bonfire with
their remaining wood.
With the morning they packed up camp and after embracing one other for the
last time in their lives, Paul headed towards the Palouse and eventually to
Seattle and beyond. Paul headed to the east to his family there. As they went
they talked about their vision of this new world that existed in a state of
virtual reality, but everyone thought they were crazy. But for many years some
would say they met each summer at the pit and from there went to the back
country to withdraw from God's golden provision a grubstake for the new year
and to make sure the cairn of their testimony was still standing.
As the first rays of the sun beamed over the summit of First Thought
Mountain, they pierced my sleep, I again awoke startled. Almost till noon I
searched for the golden box and the leather journal but they were not to be
found. The remains of the fire circle, the tent area, the wooden box, and the
Prince Albert can were all easy to establish. The only question that remains,
was the whole encounter with John Justin and Paul Grace a dream, or a vision,
or a creation of my own imagination. I can't remember going to that quartz rock
quarry for five or six years now. But one thing for sure, sometime next summer
I will be looking for the grassy junction off the Little Boulder Road.
This story is of course fiction, but is a founders story of the formation of
Justin-Grace Inc. a Washington corporation I formed last week. The line on the
business cards says Symbiotic Community Investments. Those investments mostly
in human capital forms, are focused on trying to provide infrastructure
development funds for projects throughout the world. This is the real world
focus. In the virtual world we have three world wide web URL's,
meyersfalls.com, which is a global village of urban areas of a population of
30,000 or more. Oikosvirtual (oikosvirtual.org), is rural areas of less than
30,000 persons. The paper Good News Report (goodnewsreport.net) is a paper that
reports good news from all over the world.
It is my desire that this seed would grow to provide an opportunity for you
to make some extra money as a correspondent, or to obtain funding for your good
news projects and other things. These can be any project that improves the
conditions of individuals or your community. Most importantly, it of course will
provide an opportunity for people to learn and to commit to the only real good
news in this life, that of course is only through the propitiatory work of
Jesus Christ. If you would like more information on this please let me know.
More information will come in following weeks which will eventually include a
emailing specifically geared toward community growth on another secular focused
list. Please pray for this development.
Blessing , and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, and honor, and power,
and might, be unto our God forever and ever.
Amen.