THE SURVEYOR
I have been watching a few seasons of a show on the History Channel called The Curse of Oak Island. The premise of the show follows the exploration of a treasure said to be buried on Oak Island near Nova Scotia by two brothers Rick and Marty Lagina. As kids, they read an article in Readers Digest about the story of buried treasure and have been obsessed ever since. Marty is an engineer and owns his own engineering firm and Rick is a retired postal worker. The two have teamed up with local treasure hunter Dan Blankenship and a land surveyor named Fred Nolan both who have been searching for the treasure over 50 years. Sharing their findings through maps and other documentation, the Lagina’s are utilizing today’s drilling methods and are getting close to finding the treasure. While filming one of the seasons Fred Nolan passed away and as a memorial to Fred they spoke of his life’s work as a sur veyor/treasure hunter and in the episode, they read the following poem:
THE SURVEYOR
“Remove not the ancient landmark which thy fathers have set.”
—Proverbs 22:28
He thrives on patterns,
his marks and monuments
transform a wilderness
and by his carefully tagged
and numbered squares,
neat roads, correction lines
and small cadastral lots
he clothes in certainty,
in geometrical designs,
man’s ancient rights.
He scans the skies,
reading some far-off star
by which he plots
meridians and makes his maps,
stitching a new-found world
into a patchwork quilt,
a net of metes and bounds,
so, lands may know their own
and live in peace.
— DON W. THOMSON
So, as we are setting a section corner for a boundary survey, or finding a property corner for someone to build a fence, or drilling for a well, or writing a Geotech report of a soil boring that was done so someone can build a house, or designing a parking lot or road. We must remember that our work is important to someone now and for future work to be proud of your accomplishment of your work, whether it being Land Surveying, Civil Engineering, Geotechnical Engineering, Drilling, or any work that is done in the Surveying and Engineering world.
- THE SURVEYOR - January 23, 2018
