By Scott Hunter
Editor Publisher 

Thoughts on fourteen hundredths of a second

 

Last updated 2/22/2023 at 12:01pm



We take a lot of risks in our everyday lives. Some are more worthy than others.

From assuming we know how to navigate that ice during a thaw to getting behind the steering wheel, life is full of them, some warranted, some not.

Last week, two such risks stood out. On Friday, the Bureau of Reclamation started pumping water from Lake Roosevelt up to Banks Lake, an annual beginning that primes the Columbia Basin Project’s food-raising abilities. It also warms Banks Lake’s water slightly when winter has been cold enough to freeze it.

The risky business comes at the decision by those folks fishing through the ice who think they know how to read it. They probably do, most of the time. But when invisible warmth is being pumped in from beneath the ice, that seems a big gamble.

The other risk seen this week is all around us, but is deemed acceptable, even heroic. It probably is, and it can also underscore the extreme fragility of our lives and health in very short order.

Fourteen hundredths of one second was all it took on Saturday. That’s how long the time lasted the clicks of the shutter on my camera as I recorded a player being injured in a basketball game. She jumped to defend against a shot at the basket, then came down almost normally, but not quite. In 0.14 seconds, she was on the floor in agony.

I hope she’s OK, that the injury is entirely treatable, and that she’s back out there in no time.

But we take risks when we pursue life with all we’ve got, and sometimes we lose something that way. That can be acceptable if the gains from those risks come in over the rest of our lifetime, as when striving to do your best at one thing teaches you how to achieve in anything.

But we also take unwarranted risks for something only as valuable as a fish. That just seems worse than silly.

Scott Hunter

editor and publisher

 

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