The First Dam

The villagers at the mouth of a deep defile watched with concern as it rained and rained and rained on the mountain. Years before a landslide had blocked the defile much further up but now water was building up and up and up behind it.

It occurred to a village genius to imitate the landslide. He told the other villagers to strew boulders in the defile to slow the rush when it came and to build a kind of lined channel in the landslide to at least put off the catastrophe. Meanwhile, he himself would build a second landslide. He called it a dam. He had the whole thing envisioned in his mind, the stone foundations thick and anchored into the surrounding rock, the combination of logs and earth, the diversions to allow a moderate flow through. But the foundations were very important, he believed, to hold the weight of the water. He spent a lot of time figuring them out and constructing them very carefully. When the villagers asked for help, he told them ‘not yet.’

Meanwhile the floods built up and scarcely had he finished his foundations but everything, foundation and village and all, were washed away.

In another land in another time, there was a similar village. There its genius realized time was pressing and did not spend so much time on his foundation. However, his villagers helped him less. Either they believed the flood was fate, or doubted his novel idea, or more likely personal rivalries and old bitterness prevented them from coming together. With only intermittent and sporadic help, that village genius intelligently decided to do a rush project. He was still adding to his concoction of dirt and sticks and logs and rocks when the flood came down. The dam held . . . for a bit. But poorly constructed, it soon gave way. Not only was the village and dam washed away, but many were killed by the heaving logs and by the sudden burst of water so near their home when the dam broke.

**
In a third village, much the same, in yet another time and place, the genius had help from the village and intelligently understood that there was limited time. He knew was making several guesses about how best to build a dam but he designed and reinforced what he could and the villagers willingly helped. Aided by the boulders these villagers had strewn and the side channels they had dug, the dam stood.

People from all that region came to ask their advice and help in building their own dams. The genius wasn’t sure which of his guesses were only right through luck in the particular circumstances of their flood, and didn’t know if the overall design he selected was at all the best one, but he gave what advice he could. Some of the dams people built worked, others didn’t, knowledge grew through trial and error.

**
There are many lands and many times and many mountains with villages and defiles. In yet another one of these, in time there arose a genius at a time when a landslide had blocked his village’s defile and the rains were coming heavy on the mountains.
This man’s intelligence ran in a different direction. Rather than design the best dam he could with guesses and assumptions he merely enlisted his village to build multiple dams. They made it a kind of competition, even. “Try and build a new landslide,” he said, and that was all the direction he gave them or had to give them. So they did. some literally tried to cave in the sides of the defile. Others constructed from the bottom. Some with dirt, some with stone, some with wood. Some just build a long field of boulders and diversions. One enterprising man tried to tunnel into a cave system to see if he could drain the flood that way.

When the landslide broke, some of the dams broke took, but some held, or partially held . . . and the village was saved.

People from all that region came to ask their advice and help in building their own dams. No one remembered particularly well exactly how each surviving dam was built differently from the rest . . . some said one thing, and some another. The visitors were able to deduce some tips just by observing the aftermath. Some of those dams people built worked, others didn’t, knowledge grew through trial and error.

***
Let us tell you about one more time and one more place. There the genius had a truly great mind. His vision saw the possibilities of different ways dams could be constructed, but also the uncertainty. His whole village, indeed all that land round about, was enterprising and harmonious. He convinced his village and many other villages to commit to a heroic effort. His village built multiple dams, but not haphazardly. Each one was built with specific variations. They recorded how each one was built minutely. There were other villages with defiles. They built multiple dams there too. Villages that were not near the mountains sent labor and food. The king heard of the project and came, with his own hands he hauled stone.

When the landslide broke (and when floods came in various ways down the other defiles), they had observers standing by each dam to see if it held and to record why or why not. If the dam held, they let the water through it to test the next dam.

Not a single life was lost. Not a single village flooded.

In the sky a bright angel appeared and pronounced them benefactors of mankind.

Not all the dams they built thereafter were ideal and some few did not last. There was still trial and error . . . but less. Most of the dams held. There was peace and prosperity for many a day.