Friday, May 17, 2013

Have you ever considered just how amazing your brain really is?  This is a corollary question to the just as amazing query, ‘Have you ever considered just how amazing your body really is?’  The body is indeed amazing, but let’s consider just the brain.  Maybe 8 years ago, I realized that living on the side of a mountain had it’s disadvantages.  One major problem is that there isn’t much “flat” here.  I admire the Peruvian natives who have terraced the tops of their steep mountains for centuries to produce crops, but I don’t have the time or manpower to cut those terraces out by hand, so I bought a tracked loader.  If you aren’t familiar with loaders, ask your 3 year old.  He’ll help you out.  Anyway, I was able to move a lot of dirt and rock with that loader.  Loaders are better at moving dirt than digging dirt however, and it came to me that I would be far more efficient with an excavator.  My original thought was that a backhoe would be perfect (a cross between a farm tractor with a loader bucket on the front and a hoe on the back), but after renting one a couple of times, I understood the value of tracks when working on a slope as opposed to rubber tires.   The same guy who sold me the loader was happy to sell me an excavator, and I could dig.  You can see it coming already, I’m sure, but digging without a dump truck isn’t very efficient, so I got a dump truck and I was happy…..for a time.  I created a large flat terrace on both sides of the house where I could build a greenhouse and garden and compost and store all the heavy equipment and other essential building materials I collect.  Road work isn’t done very efficiently by either loaders or excavators.  Bulldozers are desirable.  Once again the equipment dealer had “such a deal” on a used bulldozer that I couldn’t say no, so my collection is now complete.  (I would really like to have a small grader, but I don’t think it’s cost-effective.)  Now, for the Brain.  I have spent hours in the seat of each of these pieces of equipment.  It takes a little while playing with the controls and experimentation with dirt to learn what the capabilities are, but in a short time moving and rotating and filling and dumping become second nature that doesn’t take a thought.  In fact, after your brain has put together the computer program to fire the right muscle at the right time to accomplish a certain action, the connection becomes one between the eyes and the hands more than conscious movement.  If conscious thought interferes with the movement, you are likely to do the wrong thing instead of the right one, i.e. instead of dumping, you may lower the bucket with disastrous consequences.  Everyone has experienced the same thing as they become comfortable driving a new car or operating a sewing machine or knowing which knob on the stove to  turn to light a particular burner.  The amazing part……there is really no limit to the number of different tasks your brain can learn without confusing them.  My excavator sat all winter long after last using it to lift the snow machines down from the top of the storage container on my “flat” space.  I store them up there to keep them out of the way, and after a grizzly bear chewed the seats off two machines, to keep them out of the bear’s way.  A week ago, Robert helped me hook up each machine to lift  them back to top of the container for the summer.  With 6 months away from the controls, my brain still knew which lever to pull and handle to twist without a lot of my input.  I can still get in my 1958 International Harvester pickup which I haven’t driven for a long time and feel perfectly comfortable at the controls.  Your brain relegates these endless tasks termed “muscle memory” to automatic execution to allow your brain to engage in reason and logic without getting bogged down in the minutiae of which muscles to use when you walk or throw or play an instrument or swallow.  Each of these requires a spectacularly complicated and orchestrated series of nerves and muscles firing in proper sequence with meticulous timing.  Like I said, the brain is amazing, and that is just a small part of all the things it does without even coming close to its limits.  My challenge every day is to stretch it.