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| Intracoastal Waterway |
I think this photo is Torin, my grandson. Notice the "fence"? Or maybe you would call it a guard rail? It reminds me that fences can be made of wood, created to be a guide and a protection, as well as for keeping someone or an animal corraled.
Torin is a young man, now, holding down a job in Orlando, and still great fun to be around! Around Fort Walton Beach, this waterway is called "The Sound". Torin is good timber. The Sound represents to me all of the events that follow our life-lines. Good, bad, and indifferent. This is the test of good timber, the challenges, perhaps.
The Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) is a 3,000-mile (4,800 km) inland waterway
along the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coasts of the United States,
running from Boston, Massachusetts, southward along the Atlantic
Seaboard and around the southern tip of Florida, then following the Gulf
Coast to Brownsville, Texas.
Location: Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coasts of ...
Length: 3,000-mile (4,800 km)
Good Timber
The tree that never had to fight
For sun and sky and air and light,
But stood out in the open plain
And always got its share of rain
Never became a forest king
But lived and died a scrubby thing.
The man who never had to toil
To gain and farm his patch of soil,
Who never had to win his share
Of sun and sky and light and air,
Never became a manly man
But lived and died as he began.
Good timber does not grow with ease,
The stronger wind, the stronger trees,
The further sky, the greater length,
The more the storm, the more the strength.
By sun and cold, by rain and snow,
In trees and men good timbers grow.
Where thickest lies the forest growth
We find the patriarchs of both.
And they hold counsel with the stars
Whose broken branches show the scars
Of many winds and much of strife.
This is the common law of life.
This poem was printed in a church magazine many years ago; I had cut it out to save and re-discover. If you want to see it on the Internet, put the title into Google. Here is one such "hit".
