The walking drum (of construction)

Growing up, I loved to read. All kinds of books really: first Lord of the Rings, then Star Wars books (I can't believe I'm publicly admitting this), then Louis L'Amour, Clive Cussler, and finally, in high school, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner. Through college, my favorites were Cormac McCarthy, Leo Tolstoy, Thomas Wolf. There are some big names in there, but there was one book that ruled them all: The Walking Drum by Louis L'Amour. I read it as early as middle school and as late as senior year of college.

Louis L'Amour wasn't lyrical like Fitzgerald or Wolf, and his books didn't have the profound world-weary wisdom of Hemingway or McCarthy, and the worlds he described weren't complete like those of Tolkien or Tolstoy, but he could tell one helluva story.

The Walking Drum is an epic story set centuries ago, but it is the motif of the walking drum in the novel that continues to intrigue me. In a caravan of merchants, the walking drum was the constant beat of the march forward. From place to place, from fortune to misfortune and birth to death, the walking drum was the heartbeat that gave the travelers courage and reminded them always that what would be would be and all they could do was look forward to the horizon and put foot in front of foot.

Here is a quote from the book: "We often sang as we marched, and there was always the sound of the marching drum, a sound I shall hear all my life, so deeply is it imbedded in the fibers of my being..."

Here at the Commons, on the build site at ICB, I can hear the walking drum. I see us all looking ahead and marching forward. I see the progress as the floor is ripped free, walls torn down, and as if by magic (but really by muscle), sand comes to fill in the holes and cover the gathered rainwater; the sand rises and is leveled by a humming machine (The Whacker), gravel covers it. Flat, ready for the new floor.

Soon - I can see it already, just ahead - I can see the new floor gleaming warm in the sunlight, polished and strong, its foundations deep in this Langley earth. We are getting closer, and I would like to invite all of you in the community to come to the site and see our progress. To join the caravan and march forward with us.