Your 4th of July mission, should you decide to accept it, comes in three parts today.
Part One: Go Fish.
Simple. Direct. To the point. We hope you’re out there right now in fact. If we could choose where we’d all be standing today, it just might be on the banks of the Firehole (below) or in Craig (right).
It doesn’t matter where you’re standing today – be it fresh or salt, freestone river, lake, pond, ditch, bay, bayou, slough, gulf or ocean. Get out there.
Part Two: Eat, Drink and Be Merry.
The 4th has long been a time to enjoy goods from the grill along with chilly adult beverages and libations in the company of comely friends, neighbors and even occasionally family.
Shoot some fireworks off. Make some noise. Get your hands dirty. Teach your kids to safely handle fireworks essentials. Maybe even irritate your boring neighbors.
Above all, be safe out there.
Part Three: Read and Remember.
During some quiet time this holiday weekend, take five minutes out of your day and re-read the Declaration of Independence.
After all, The Declaration’s words (1458 words including the signatures) codified and explained the rationale behind our then fledgling country’s separation from England and are the reason you’ve enjoyed this long weekend and extra river time.
Rarely do men and women of today show evidence of thinking and communicating the way our forefathers did 239 years ago; perhaps it’s time we remember.
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security…
…And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.
Craig 4th of July image via Fire Girl Photography | Jess McGlothlin Media
