[at-l] expert risk takers

[Bob Cummings <ellen@clinic.net> (Bob C.)]

"...I seriously suspect that, both personally and professionally, I know more
about "risk" than you've ever dreamed of," claims Jim.

  Yes. Jim. I'll concede you are probably an expert on risk. I know experts.
I've spent a lifetime dealing with experts.

 Experts are "my" playground. Experts were the nine out of 10 analysts
who were still recommending we buy ENRON a week before it filed for bankruptcy.

Experts are all the $500 an hour lawyers who said the Bigelow Referendum lacked
teeth and even its passage would do nothing. I think of them occasionally as I
walk the 35,000 acre Bigelow Preserve.

Experts are those who chuckled at the gullable people who thought Maine had any
chance of reclaiming 400,000 acres of public land that it had taxed as private
land for 125 years. I think of them occasionally as I wander through the
Mahoosuc Preserve and other preserves along the Appalachian Trail created out of
those 400,000 acres.

Experts are those who insisted creating a land trust in the poorest town in the
county was a foolish, wasteful effort. I thought of them today as I spent a few
hours wandering along a preserved pond shore and pondered the network of
marginally-blazed trails that traverse our protected lands.

It was an expert who told me, "Bob, you are dreaming. Industry will never let
this river be clean." I think of him as I see clam diggers making a living
harvesting shellfish in the cove in front of my house.

Experts thought Henry Thoreau a ner'do well for "wasting" his life wandering the
woods. Most of their names are lost in history. But Henry is still influencing
this world. I thought of his plea that each small town should preserve a
thousand acres of wood land when I was filing our land trust papers. We are 700
acres and counting.

Weary