06 May 2001 #0119.html

Father's and Son's Campout

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Dear Paul and Kate, Melanie and Jared, Bridget and Justin, Sara, Ben and Sarah, Heather, Audrey, Rachel, and Matt via hardcopy,

cc: file, Tony Hafen, Pauline Nelson via mail, Sara and Des Penny, Claude and Katherine Warner, Lloyd and Luana Warner, Diane Cluff, Maxine Shirts via mail.

Welcome to "Thoughtlets." This is a weekly review of an idea, belief, thought, or words that will hopefully be of some benefit to you, my children, with an electronic copy to on-line extended family members. Any of you can ask me not to clutter your mail box at any time.

"Friday night was the first Ward Father's & Son's Campout I think Nottingham Country Ward has ever had. I have refered to Father's & Son's Campouts in other Thoughtlets (../9707.html, ../9820.html, and ../9943.html), and these were always Stake activities. A decade ago, on the 8th of March 1991 there was a Stake Father's and Son's Campout at Brasos Bend State Park. I remember Ken Turner was there, and we spent time talking about my recent trip to Australia, Indonesia, and Japan with my Father. Mosly I remember it because I created the following song, and specifically I remember it, like you will each realize you best remember, because it is written down in a notebook:

`Fathers And Sons, 08 March 1991 1. Fathers and sons on a campout in the woods Fathers teaching sons the things they feel they should 2. Memories floating trhough time Memories not only mine 3. Fathers and sons throwing fish hooks in the lake Fathers showing sons what the fish will take 4. Fathers and sons kick a ball on the grassy knoll Fathers chasing sons because they are getting old 5. Fathers and sons talk all about life Fathers explain to sons why there should be no strife 6. Fathers and sons go together on a trip Fathers fly sons around the world in a ship'

I remember going to many Katy Stake Father's and Son's campouts. As time passes the memories grow dim, because I did not take the time to document my feelings. I remeber several of the early ones after we first moved into Nottingham Country Ward, ~1985-1989, were at Chudly's ranch out in Waller. I remember we had several at Stephen F. Austin State Park, and how there was never a place to park the car there were so many people at the campout. Then we started having them up at Cypress Spring Park. Since these were stake activities, there was always a lot of people. Of course, the folks that mattered to me were those who would seek me out and spend time talking with me. Over the years this has most consistently been an artist, Ken Turner, and a musician, Jim Conners. Those nights were fun. There were the kind of times Henry David Thoreau wrote about in his book `On Walden Pond:'

`Probably I should not consciously and deliberately forsake my particular calling to do the good which society demands of me, to save the universe from annihilation; and I believe that a like but infinitely greater steadfastness elsewhere is all that now preserves it. . . . I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society. When visitors came in larger and unexpected numbers there was but the third chair for them all, but they generally economized the room by standing up. It is surprising how many great men and women a small house will contain. I have had twenty-five or thirty souls, with their bodies, at once under my roof, and yet we often parted without being aware that we had come very near to one another. . . . One inconvenience I sometimes experienced in so small a house, the difficulty of getting to a sufficient distance from my guest when we began to utter the big thoughts in big words. You want room for your thoughts to get into sailing trim and run a course or two before they make their port. The bullet of your thought must have overcome its lateral and ricochet motion and fallen into its last and steady course before it reaches the ear of the hearer, else it may plow out again through the side of his head. Also, our sentences wanted room to unfold and form their columns in the interval. Individuals, like nations, must have suitable broad and natural boundaries, even a considerable neutral ground, between them. I have found it a singular luxury to talk across the pond to a companion on the other side. In my house we were so near that we could not begin to hear, we cound not speak low enough to be heard; as when you throw two stones into calm water so near that they break each other's undulations. If we are merely loquacious and loud talkers, then we can afford to stand very near together, cheek by jowl, and feel each other's breath; but if we speak reservedly and thoughtfully, we want to be farther apart, that all animal heat and moisture may have a chance to evaporate. If we would enjoy the most intimate society with that in each of us which is without, or above, being spoken to, we must not only be silent, but commonly so far apart bodily that we cannot possibly hear each other's voice in any case. Referred to this standard, speech is for the convenience of those who are hard of hearing; but there are many fine things which we cannot say if we have to shout. As the conversation began to assum a loftier and grander tone, we gradually shoved our chairs farther apart till they touched the wall in opposite corners, and then commonly there was not room enough. My "best" room, however, my withdrawing room, always ready for company, on whose carpet the sun rarely fell, was the pine wood behind my house. Thither in summer days, when distinguished guests came, I took them, and a priceless domestic swept the floor and dusted the furniture and kept the things in order. . . . I should not forget that during my last winter at the pond there was another welcome visitor, who at one time came through the village, through snow and rain and darkness, till he saw my lamp through the trees, and shared with me some one winter evenings. One of the last of the philosophers,- Connecticut gave him to the world,- he peddled first her wars, afterwards, as he declares, his brains. These he peddles still, prompting God and disgracing man, bearing for fruit his brain only, like the nut its kernel. I think that he must be the man of the most faith of any alive. His words and attitude always suppose a better state of things than other men are acquainted with, and he will be the last man to be disappointed as the ages revolve. He has no venture in the present. But though comparatively disregarded now, when his day comes, laws unsuspected by most will take effect, and masters of families and rulers will come to him for advice.- "How blind that cannot see serenity!" A true friend of man; almost the only friend of human progress. An Old Mortality, say rather an Immortality, with unwearied patience and faith making plain the image engraven in men's bodies, the God of whom they are but defaced and leaning monuments. With his hospitable intellect he embraces children, beggars, insane, and scholars, and entertains the thought of all, adding to it commonly some breadth and elegance. I think that he should keep a caravansary on the world's highway, where philosophers of all nations might put up, and on his sign should be printed, "Entertainment for man, but not for his beast. Enter ye that have leisure and a quiet mind, who earnestly seek the right road." He is perhaps the sanest man and has the fewest crotchets of any I chance to know; the same yesterday and to-morrow. Of yore we had sauntered and talked, and effectually put the world behind us; for he was pledged to no institution in it, freeborn, ingenious. Whichever way we turned, it seemed that the heavens and the earth had met together, since he enhanced the beauty of the landscape. A blue-robed man, whose fittest roor is the overarching sky which reflects his serenity. I do not see how he can ever die; Nature cannot spare him. Having some shingles of thought well dried, we sat and whittled them, trying our knives, and admiring the clear yellowish grain of the pumpkin pine. We waded so gently and reverently, or we pulled together so smoothly, that the fishes of thought were not scared from the stream, nor feared any angler on the bank, but came and went grandly, like the clouds which float through the western sky, and the mother-o'-pearl flocks which sometimes form and dissolve there. There we worked, revising mythology, rounding a fable here and there, and building castles in the air for which earth offered no worthy foundation. Great Looker! Great Expecter! to converse with whom was a New England Night's Entertainment. Ah! such discourse we had, hermit and philosopher, and the old settler I have spoken of, -we three,- it expanded and racked my little house; I should not dare to say how many pounds weight there was above the atmospheric pressure on every circular inch; it opened its seams so that they had to be calked with much dullness thereafter to stop the consequent leak; - but I had enough of that kind of oakum already picked.' p. 54, 97-99, 180-181

This Father's and Son's Campout was different. Matt wanted to run and play, start fires and drive his toy car, play tennis and football, etc. There was a banker, an oil company process guy, an insecure divorced boy who was once one of my scouts on a Philmont trek, a `Big Five' accounting guy, a pipeline guy, an oil company accountant, and other right brained guys. One of my Venture Scouts was there with his guitar, and I twisted his mind a little bit, pointing out relative carbon-dioxide contributions from cement and car emissions. Paul I need to quantify this, and I hope you can get the research for me prior to a class I am going to teach at Taylor High School on the 16th of May. His Dad was suprised to learn of the concept of dynamically replenishing hydrocarbon fields. There was a brief conversation about the banker's two four letter words: cash flow. The trees were the same as when I wrote the following song at Cypress Creek Park at another Father's and Son's Campout:

`Find the Seed, 02 March 1996 1. Trees are reaching out to grasp the sky Growing so their leaves are all up high Roots are growing deep where we can't see Water and nuitrients taken for free C. First you find the seed That will meet the need Then you find a space Where it can grow in place 2. Children reaching out to grasp the sky Growing so their heads are all up high Roots are growing deep where we can't see Nuitrients and love taken for free 3. Families reaching out to grasp each other Growing so they know who is their brother Roots are growing deep where we can't see Love and relations taken for free 4. Business reaches out to help the client Sometimes growing up to be a giant Roots are growing deep where we can't see Relations and ideas taken for free 5. Society reaches out to help the poor Growing so every member can soar Roots are growing deep where we can't see Ideas and nuitrients taken for free C. First you find the seed That will meet the need Then you find a space Where it can grow in place Where it can grow in place'

However, there was no right brained eccentric at this father's and son's campout. There was no artist nor musician, to pull the big thoughts and words out of the sky and wrap them around my brain and tickle my imagination. Brother Branning did ask me to work with his son Mitch on the Geology Merit Badge. Saturday morning I took 10, then it dropped to 6, then the number dropped to 5 boys on a two mile hike to explain the process of erosion, as it relates to topography, ravines, river base-level, fans, grain-size, slope, scale, and other esoteric concepts upon which all of our agriculture, all of our natural resource extraction, all of our housing, and all of our society are built upon. I could not help but think of all of you guys, my 10 kids (including those who no longer want to receive a copy of these musings), and wonder if there will only be 5 of you who will end up sticking with me to find eternal life together. Then I wonder if I have any chance of finding eternity. Probably I should not consciously and deliberately forsake my particular calling to do the good which society demands of me, to save the universe from annihilation. Or were those words that came from some other 1-dimensional or 2-dimensional woods, long ago and in another universe?

Monday morning I left at 7:30 after spending over an hour answering e-mails and such. I got to Earth View a little bit after 8:00. Sam copied my zip drives on his NT and wrote the files out to a disk. I went downtown and reviewed the work Les Denham had done in putting together presentations of the Matagorda Island project for BP. Then I went to the Astrodome for the OTC. Most of the Astrodome parking lot is torn up for the building of a giant new football stadium. It looks like it is going to be bigger than the Astrodome, the 8th wonder of the world. I finally found where the authors meet, and downloaded the CD, linked all of the movies, and turned it over to the AV guys. All of the people in my session showed up. First Roger Anderson, then Wayne Esser of Boeing, then Tom Frantis of Exxon-Mobil, then Robert Hobbs of Veritas, then Jackie Singleton of Phillips, and finally Geoff Dorn now at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Great group of people. We had a lot of fun talking before the session, and then the session happened. Everything went very smoothly except my talk. When the files were copied from the computer I built the files on to the new computer all of the movie links were lost. So I punted for a change. How can one change the universe if they are always punting.

Robert Hobbs told us that Magic Earth (../0006.html, ../0011.html, ../0017.html, and 0026.html), Continuum's perceived competition, which was spun out of Texaco a year and a half after Continuum started, was purchased by Halliburton and Landmark earlier in the day for $100,000,000 (read my words: that is one hundred million dollars in stock exchanges, probably 25% of which was owned by the President, CEO, and Chairman of the Board). Oh well! Guess it proves the Continuum concept was on track. I did call Mike Zeitlin (../9840.html, ../9938.html, and 9840.html), whom John Amason and I had taken to dinner at Carmellos and asked to be the President of Walden Visualization Systems, which became Continuum Resources, on my cell phone and asked him if he would like to invest in Dynamic Resources. He hasn't responded yet. How am I going to change the universe if:

YearEventLater Financial Success by Others
1974Refused to sign Mobil's Patent Release PapersLandmark purchased by Halliburton for $560 million
1982Designed Landmark's seismic post-stack processing with Andy HildebrandIn about 1996 Applied Geophysics was sold to Landmark Graphics and Rutt Bridges makes $60 million.
1989Developed a hypertext browser for geologist with Terry Smith at the University of Southwestern Louisiana (which is still better than NetScape or MicroSoft Explorer for Geoscientists)Mosaic introduced in 1993, and Netscape goes public in about 1995
1996Defined the Immersive Reality busines plan for Walden Visualization Systems with John Amason and Keith RawlinsonsMagic Earth sold to Landmark and Halliburton for $100 million

Maybe Father's and Son's Campouts are actually to keep us grounded to the fact money doesn't matter to God, nor to obtaining eternal life. At least that's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

Tuesday I met Dave Agarwal, Les Denham, and the two interpreters who worked up Matagorda Island at Vastar's old office, now part of the BP family. We had a good presentation, and I was able to lay some nice groundwork for Dynamic Resources, and particularly the prospects Dick Coons is developing in the North and South Padre Island Areas. I left there at noon and went back to the OTC, where I was a room monitor, at the request of Alf Klaviness. It was an interesting session on subsea completions. I had about 110 per speaker in my session, tapering off to about 40 for my talk, which was the last talk. These guys had 230 per speaker, tapering off to about 115 for the last talk. Guess there is a lot more interest in things (pumps, christmas trees, ROVs: remote operated vehicles, etc.) than concepts (exporation plays, visualization, interpretation tools, etc.). Remember what Nephi taught us: `God ... hath created all things, ... both things to act and things to be acted upon.' (2 Nephi 2:14). I don't understand why these folks are more interested in the `things to be acted upon' than the `things to act.' Oh well! I know the difference, and as one of the `things to act' I will continue to pursue my particular calling. I got home about 7:00 and proceeded to start acting on the next set of things.

Wednesday morning started early putting together sales packets for prospects, etc. There was a catch-up phone call with Swede Nelson (0108.html and 0113.html). At 9:30 I went and picked up Dick Coons and we went to see Bob Williams about their prospect offshore Belize. Interesting stuff. I spent all the rest of the week putting these sales packets together. Wednesday night the Scouts did a joint activity on Emergency Prepardness. Matt received nice compliments from Brother Branning on his efforts and presentation of first aid kits. At about 10:30 we got a call from Steve Shirts asking Andrea to participate in a family fast the next dayfor his daughter Mavanee who has serious ear blockage problems. We started our fast with the evening prayer, before we went to sleep. It was really neat to be asked to participate in a family fast. Thursday night I took a break to go to Rachel's Choir Banquet. Before we left for the dinner, Andrea and I knelt in the library and closed our fast. There was a wonderful spirit there, and I know Mavanee will be blessed. I look forward to participating in Family Fasts for each of you and for your children. At the dinner, the pictures of all of the kids were really nice, and were well done. The senior play of what went on during the year was a little vulgar in parts, and it was really funny. I was proud of the senior girl who played Rachel in the play. It showed me Rachel is setting a great example. The meal was catered by Carabba's, and was the best school banquet I have been to. I did work until about 2:00 Friday morning, and restarted at 6:00. Andrea helped me and we had 9 sales packets ready to be sent by Federal Express when Matt and I left for the father's and son's campout at 6:00 on Friday evening. I was probably too tired for the kind of discussions which have usually occurred at camp anyway.

Matt and I got back from the father's and son's campout just in time for his soccer game, which they one 3 to 2. I went by and saw Rob and took Paul and Kate's wedding pictures afterwards. Rob was cordial and even said `Thanks for coming by.' He also said `I will call you if I want to do anything with you.' I could not help but think of Uncle Lloyd's comment to Paul and I when we visited a week ago: `It is so sad when someone turns down someone who want's to mentor them and who cares. There are just too few mentors around these days.' Oh well! I went and got a haircut and asked the lady we gave a Book of Mormon to how her reading is coming. She says her Grandson keeps talking to her about it (0105.html). Andrea and Rachel went to a Pacesetter's Review. I took Matt to the Eighth-Grade Dance. He had his suit on, and looked like a billion dollars. Andrea had helped decorate the gym with a Hollywood Theme (and had taken down the R-Rated movie posters), and so I went in and took some digital photos. Got a nice photo of Matt and one of the girls who he was talking to. As I left, Sandy Brown, who did some contract work for me at Continuum, corned me in the parking lot under our umbrella's and we caught up on what we have each been doing. When Dynamic takes off, I anticipate she will have an important role to play. She is leaving for a three week tour of China with one of her girlfriends right after school gets out. She says her husband thinks she is half Buddist.

When I got home from dropping off Matt and getting gas, I started working on the next proposal and forgot to watch the clock. Heather, this is to tell everyone I'm sorry I was late getting to the airport to pick you up. At least you only had to wait a couple of minutes. It is good to have you here for the summer, and I look forward to getting to know you better.

I bore my testimony in Fast & Testimony Meeting today, specifically talking about my feeling in fasting for Mavanee on Wednesday, and when I found the chart showing famines in MesoAmerica. It was the first time to do so in a long time (../0036.html). I also taught the High Priest priesthood lesson today, at Lyle Rowbury's request. He wanted a lesson on what husband's can do to build better communication with their wives, and suggested I use material from `that course' (PAIRS). It was a hard lesson for me to teach. It seemed to go OK. We celebrated Heather's birthday at lunch with an ice cream birthday cake. I definitely like this tradition. Rachel gave a nice Family Home Evening on service, and how her project of planting flowers at the nursing home has helped her feel good. It has been a nice day. I hope all of your days for each of you, this next week, are just as nice."

I'm interested in sharing weekly a "thoughtlet" (little statements of big thoughts which mean a lot to me) with you because I know how important the written word can be. I am concerned about how easy it is to drift and forget our roots and our potential among all of distractions of daily life. To download any of these thoughtlets go to http://www.walden3d.com/thoughtlets or e-mail me at rnelson@walden3d.com.

With all my love,
Dad
(H. Roice Nelson, Jr.)

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Copyright © 2001 H. Roice Nelson, Jr.