Marshall Ramsey

She had a picture of the Grand Canyon hanging over her desk.   It was huge, taking up most of her office wall. On a table beneath it were pictures of her family and a few other photos from her favorite places.  Important photos. But there was no doubt: The Grand Canyon was the dominant feature of her office.

It was a conversation starter. Co-workers would walk into the room and ask why she had such an odd picture hanging in her office.  She smiled and said that she had taken the photo on a family vacation a few years ago and that it was meaningful to her heart.  But what she didn’t mention was why it was so important to her.

The Grand Canyon is 277 miles long, up to 18 miles wide and attains a depth of over a mile.  It’s one of the wonders of the world which was carved by the rushing Colorado River over a span of nearly two-billion years.  It’s not an overnight success.

And neither was she.  Her path to success had taken time. Lots of time. With successes and many, many failures along the way. Her ambition was like the river, carving her destiny and encountering numerous obstacles.  But the force of her will couldn’t be stopped. It just flowed and created amazing things from the beginning to the end. She knew that still water just stagnated.  It was rushing rivers that created wonders.

The Grand Canyon was like her:  Time and effort had created something amazing. Every day she’d walk into her office, look at that amazing photo and remember that great things don’t happen overnight.

And then, she’d get to work creating her own wonder of the world: Her life.

Where the fog met his self-doubt, there was a counterclockwise swirl of hopelessness and gloom. He sat in his empty office building, looking out at the gray world.  Papers were strewn everywhere on his desk; it had the air of place where no one cared. He didn’t at the moment. The world had lost faith in him (or so he thought). And he was about to lose faith in the world.

It was a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions. The world just didn’t need one more person who didn’t care. And he was at the tipping point of joining that undistinguished and depressing club.

But when he was about to be smothered by his own gloom, a single sunbeam broke through the low-lying clouds. Its warm rays illuminated his heart with hope. He knew what it was going to take to change: Action. Caring for others.  Things he could control. He watched the dense fog burn off and then got to work.

When others lose faith in you, it’s a problem. When you lose faith in yourself, it’s a tragedy.

A light breeze greeted the hunter on the opening day of Deer Season. It was right before dawn and the Sun had painted the Eastern sky with streaks of purple, pink, orange and yellow.  The caffeine from his morning coffee and the adrenaline of the hunt were keeping him awake. Which was a good thing. Falling out of a deer stand would surely lose him his man card. Or worse.

He gripped his rifle, his instrument of death, and viewed the woods around him. Off to the Northwest was a clearing. It had been planted with rye grass and was a natural magnet for the deer that lived in the 1,000 acres he hunted. He sat high above the ground, serenaded by sound of his own breath and the breeze that whispered through the pines. It was a symphony of near silence only interrupted by his own heartbeat.

A snapping sound off to his right woke him out of his trance.  It was soon followed by the rustling of leaves — rustling too loud to be just a squirrel or even a coyote.  He slowly picked up his rifle and looked through the scope.  The human eye is particularly good at detecting motion and he noticed something large moving toward the clearing.  He followed it with his scope until it moved into the field.

It was a buck. A large buck. No, a huge buck. He quickly counted the points on its antlers as it stopped to eat its last breakfast.  A 12-pointer.  The hunter’s heart began to beat rapidly has he aimed his rifle right at the buck’s heart.

He started to pull the trigger and then stopped.

He slowly put the gun down and felt over his own heart. There he felt the rough ridges of a scar. A massive scar from his cancer surgery.  Cancer that was missed by three other doctors before a fourth found it.

The deer heard the hunter and looked directly at him. Both the man and the animal gazed at each other for a minute before the buck ran off into the woods.

“Today wasn’t your day to die.” the hunter said, “Just like it wasn’t my time either.  You won’t be so lucky next time. ”  He stopped for a moment, rubbed his scar and whispered under his breath, “next time.”

The hunter had given the buck another precious chance to live — Just like the one he had received not so long ago. He set the gun down and watched the dawn wrap its arms around the woods around him.