Living Life Lakeside

I used to live in a magnificent 12,000 sq.ft. historic building perched right smack dab on the banks of the Colorado River; I could walk out my back door to the edge of my property and either fish or pee into a stretch of Gold Medal trout water that people from all over the country would travel to and pay big bucks for the opportunity to flick San Juan worms and caddis flies into its eddies and pools, hoping to land many rainbows, browns or brookies, but thrilled to land one, and if skunked, happy to have been there trying. My wife and daughter still live there, although they haven’t the proclivity to either fish or pee in the river. My hope is that when they look at the river, they think of me and wish that I were fishing or peeing there still; but I am not, nor will I be anytime soon. Maybe even never again.

I now reside in Flowood, Mississippi, an eastern suburb of Jackson, in an apartment complex called Reflection Point, on a little body of water known as Mirror Lake. In my previous Colorado life, I would revel in and delve into the history of the river we lived on, initially known as the Grand River, carver of the Grand Canyon, until 1922 when it was renamed the Colorado. Needless to say, Mirror Lake doesn’t quite have the pedigree of the Colorado, nor does its run-off contribute to anything other than duck soup. In fact, Mirror Lake is a man-made 40-acre body of water that was built to accomodate and add asthetic value to a large, mirrored office building and the subsequent apartment complex (Reflection Point / Mirror Lake – get it?). I live in the apartments, and I work in the office building.

Ergon’s headquarters are in the Mirror Lake Building, a large, multi-storied building with a mirrored glass exterior. The city of Flowood, located in Rankin County, MS, is your typical bedroom community, comprised of single and multi-family housing, strip malls, a new shopping area with the requisite Lowes, Target, Kohls and all of the supporting cast, and an anonymous, big-time taxpaying corporation quietly hiding in a large mirrored structure on the banks of Mirror Lake. Unless you work for Ergon, you drive by and don’t think about or have any idea who or what resides in the big building on the lake, as the small street-level ‘you’d miss it unless you were looking for it’ sign is the only clue as to whom or what occupies the structure. Ergon is the Greek word for ‘Work’ – while ‘ego’ is part of the word, it’s not part of the Ergon picture.

The Ergon building is rather unspectacular – a six story rectangle joined to a smaller three story section. Like the organization, the building is practical, serviceable and not the least bit ostentatious. It stands out only because at a height of six stories, it is five stories taller than anything else for miles around. I work on the third floor of the six-story building. I’d been there numerous times in my previous life – the life where I knew I was a short-timer, and knew I wouldn’t ever work for a big company, because I knew that I was ultimately going to live life riverside. Then two weeks ago, at the end of my first day at corporate, I punched the down button on the elevator to head home and said to myself, “Holy crap! After 30 years of doing everything humanly possible to avoid working in this sort of situation, I’m now working in a place with an elevator, and I’m excited and thanking God that I’m standing here pressing this button.” Flirting with poverty has a profound way of changing your perspective.

Colorado vs. Mississippi; lots to compare, lots to say. I’ll start with the topography. Colorado has big time mountains, and Mississippi is flat – no point higher than 1000 feet above sea level. (There are five states that have no point exceeding 1000 feet above sea level; I’ve given you one, for $1000, name the others.) They both have lots of pine trees – Colorado has rigid, upright, lodge-pole pines, while Mississippi has a fat-needled, droopy, almost sensuous kind of pine tree. The Colorado pines are always on guard, ready-for-a-big-snowfall and up to whatever nature throws at them; the Mississippi pines are lush, fat, lazy and look as if they’re thinkin’ about fixin’ to do nuthin’. They are both beautiful.

Colorado has Trail Ridge Road, at 12,183 feet elevation, the highest paved roadway in the US. As you wind to the top, the views make you wish you had something beyond a mere camera to record them. When you get to the top, (unless you’re from Boulder) you know that someone way beyond human is responsible for this vista; someone like, maybe, God. But God also did some road work in Mississippi. Little known to outsiders but spectacular in a way that makes serenity a much sought-after religion is the Natchez Trace Parkway. This languid stretch of two-lane, beautifully-paved, commercial-vehicle free road traces a 444-mile stretch from Natchez, MS to Nashville, TN. The road, or ‘Trace’, was carved through heavily wooded forest by Native Americans who knows how long ago, and used in subsequent years by all form and fashion of our ancestral travelers. The National Parks Service now maintains the road, and dots it with historical stop-offs and points of interest. I drove the Trace from Jackson to Natchez and back on a recent Sunday. I love to drive, and the days’ misting rain, the heavy pine forests and gentle hills and curves made the trip an unexpected, indescribable narcotic pleasure - not to compare the Trace to Trail Ridge, nor Trail Ridge to the Trace; both are singularly spectacular.

No one has the market on beauty cornered. You don’t have to be looking at mountains and rivers to be happy. The view of a man-made lake from a third floor office can be breathtaking. It’s all a matter of perspective.

To be continued…

(Mississippi, Florida, Louisiana, Rhode Island and Delaware)