An open letter to our high school seniors:

Have you ever been told your high school years are the best of your life?
People say that sometimes, and we’re sure they mean well. Maybe their memories are just faulty.
For most people, high school is something to be endured. Yes, there is raucous laughter, and the thrill and agony of sports victories and defeats. Sometimes there is the sheer, unbidden ecstasy of being young and alive.
But high school is also the last time in your life you are required to think as a child, and act as a child.
For all the years of your life, well-meaning people have been teaching you, encouraging you, and filling you up with self-esteem. We suspect that, like Huck Finn, this has often led to an urgent urge “to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she’s going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can’t stand it. I been there before.”
This will all come to a sudden end in just a few weeks. Then you’re on your own. When you enter college or take that first real job, you will quickly discover no one particularly cares if you succeed or fail.
Feel like skipping class this morning, sleeping in? Help yourself. Your mom and dad might be a little peeved about wasting money, but they will be the first to agree that succeeding or flunking out is your decision.
People talk a lot these days about “being liberated.” You will soon be liberated.
And it’s great.
The people who have raised you to this point — your parents, teachers, maybe Sister Hildegarde, for example. They have done their job. It’s now up to you.
If you do it right, it will be more fun than you can now imagine, for two reasons.
For the most part, and within the restraints of your cash flow, you will now have the freedom to do as you please.
Road trip? Let’s go.
The other reason is this: you will soon find that your accomplishments are yours. For the first time you will be able to take pride in acting independently, and doing it well.
That’s the pleasure of being a grown up. You work hard at your job, your friendships, your life, and you have the pleasure of knowing you did it well.
Which leads to the next point: Up till now you have mostly defined fun as the more obvious, less subtle pleasures. Sports, parties, Disney World.
You may say now your goal in life is to accumulate more unsubtle pleasures. Maybe you want to be rich and famous.
That’s okay. Help yourself. You may be an adult, but you’re young. We won’t laugh at you, at least not in public.
But here is the secret of successful adults: It is better and more fun to be a parent than a child, and it’s better and more satisfying to be a teacher than a student (and you learn more!)
It’s more satisfying – it is more deeply humanizing – to be a nun than an acolyte.
If you think it’s great to find a shiny bike under the Christmas tree, wait till you experience your kid finding one beneath the tree.
Here is the secret your parents, teachers and other adults have been teaching you all along, mostly by their example:It’s better to give than to receive.
You will now have the opportunity to learn that, the only way anyone learns it. On your own. Don’t blow it.

 

 

 

Dedicated to projects that enhance the quality and quantity of water...

Michael A. Bain and
R. Frank Atmore,
Cimarron Watershed Alliance, Inc.

Fifty years from now, what will be the condition of the quality and quantity of water in the Cimarron Watershed? None of us can know the future with certainty of course, but the Cimarron Watershed Alliance is putting into place a solid foundation on which the future integrity of our water resources can be anchored for generations to come.
From forest restoration and fire mitigation activities in the head-waters of our watershed, to restoration projects in the riparian areas of our streams, to the implementation of Best Management Practices that help control erosion and contamination run-off into our waters, the Cimarron Watershed Alliance is dedicated to planning, funding, and implementing projects that enhance the quality and quantity of water in our watershed — and beyond. Additionally, and with equal importance, we are collaborating with schools, teachers, and students in our watershed to enhance basic natural resource knowledge as well as working to raise awareness and consciousness of our water resources. We are enabling a “passing of the baton” to the watershed’s future decision makers for the effective stewardship of the watershed in perpetuity.
In like manner, an extremely important factor which bodes well for the future of our water resources is the rock-solisad, broad-based Alliance which has been regularly meeting and collaborating together for a number of years, and which consistently transcends personal agendas for the common good of the Cimarron Watershed Alliance mission. From our first organizational meeting in November 2001, through our incorporation meeting in 2004, and up to the present, our monthly meetings are attended as almost “standing room only”; and not just attending stakeholders, but participating stakeholders. Likewise, we are considered a “can-do” group that is totally non-political and accomplishment-oriented. With this amount of collaborative effort available, the Alliance can look to a bright future of meaningful project development and public outreach in our watershed.
In conclusion, as the world’s population expands, and as that expanding population seeks a higher standard of living, the inherent increase in the demands on the earth’s natural resources and accompanying cross-border pollution indicates that water issues will become ever increasingly a life-sustaining concern into the foreseeable future. In turn, it seems certain groups like the Cimarron Watershed Alliance will all the more be called upon to provide a forum for both reliable, balanced information and practical solutions to natural resource exploitation challenges. As an Alliance of dedicated, concerned, and capable stakeholders, the Cimarron Watershed Alliance stands ready to meet these challenges for the sustainability and betterment of our watershed.

Editor’s note: Mr. Bain is Land and Water Program Coordinator for the Quviria Coalition in Santa Fe. Atmore has been chairman of the Cimarron Watershed Alliance Board of Directors since 2003.

Speak up!
The Chronicle welcomes all viewpoints, pro and con, on this or any other important issue. E-mail, news@sangrechronicle.com; fax, 505-377-2679; or U.S. mail, P.O. Drawer I, Angel Fire, NM 87710. Please limit word count to 500 – 750 words and include background information about yourself along with a phone number should we have questions.