We spent several days in the North Georgia Mountains during the Christmas holidays. While the seasons - spring, summer and autumn - color the mountains in breathtaking beauty, wintertime, with all its starkness, offers an entirely different view of the landscape. With most of the foliage gone, people can see across the vistas from one mountain to another. A drive along mountain roads in the winter reveals sights normally camouflaged the rest of the year. Isolated homes come into the view and smoke rising from chimneys curl in the crisp, cold air. Images are so visible, it's almost as if the visitor can watch a waterfall actually chisel away the rocks.
Because we could see so clearly, we were shocked as the road wound its way around Lake Burton. The lake was almost gone. Piers on docks rose out of the mud like skeletons. A forgotten boat or two lay stranded in the mire. The many summer homes surrounding the bank looked abandoned with no grass nor lake water for a front yard.
What had happened? Then we began to speculate. Here in South Georgia we know about the ongoing drought that has plagued farmers and firefighters alike. While the daily opportunity to view ocean water with its ebb and flood of tides tends to make me forget the seriousness of the situation, the need to water the grass daily in summertime brings me back to reality. Could the drought really be this bad?
Before we left on this trip, we had watched a news magazine segment on how the drought had affected the Great Lakes. With some of those massive northern lakes as much as two feet low, the shipping industry in that area has been hard hit. The amount of tonnage that can be loaded on ships is measured by each inch of water in the lakes.
Likewise, we've all learned lately that one reason Afghanistan was so ripe for terrorists was the ongoing drought that had made farming almost impossible and daily life even harder in that region.
Seeing the state of Lake Burton made me silently pledge to be much more conservative.
Then we stopped at the fish hatchery on the lake. I sat in the warm car as Bob asked an official if he could walk through and view the operation. The fish don't stop swimming even if the weather is cold.
When Bob returned to the car, he said, "It isn't the drought." It took me a moment to return from my private reverie from looking out the window to our concern about Lake Burton.
The fish hatchery ranger explained to Bob that Lake Burton had been built for flood control. Late autumn, early winter, water is slowly released from the lake so that it can absorb the water from melting snow a few months later.
Because snow was late coming to the mountains this year, there may not be as much runoff as usual. But, come summer after what winter snow there is has melted and the spring rains bring flowers to the mountainsides, Lake Burton will once again be full of water and people playing.
In my initial reaction to this news, I was glad that the people who had homes along Lake Burton had known the situation when they bought the scarce waterfront property and that they could still enjoy their vacation spots this summer.
Then I thought about how quickly we had taken what facts we knew to be true and applied them to an unfamiliar situation. The mind is supposed to work that way so that we can use our knowledge to our benefit.
But when we don't have all the facts, we tend to make assumptions about what seems apparent, but is often not true. The real problem emerges when we pass on those faulty assumptions.
From working at the newspaper where assumptions are a "no no" and teaching journalism students the very same dangers of making assumptions, I take pride in my cynical stance to wait and see on most issues. And then something as simple as the status of Lake Burton reminds me once again that I can fall into the trap as quickly as anyone.
Thank goodness for clear days when we can relearn old lessons we thought we already knew.
2002
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