When Dreams Are Ground To Powder...

My head turned like it was on a string, I’ve become a puppet to my wild dreams.  The traffic light ahead would stay green long enough for me to turn my undivided attention to the brick-and-mortar history that towered above the trees to the north of Court Street.  I would say that I’m a good driver, mostly, but this sight definitely sparked my interest and captured my imagination.  Fulfilling the urge to know, I hung a right onto Crapo and then into the library parking lot and made my way to the back, dodging several chunks of broken pavement and potholes.  When my engine rested at idle, I stared through my cracked windshield at a boiler building for Flint Central High School that once teemed with life and supplied heat for the majestic, but daunting school that lay dormant since 2009.  Remarkable.

I don’t think a week passed that I didn’t think about what could become of this brick structure, sitting with crazy potential.  Since moving to Flint, the boiler building has been overshadowing my dreams and ambitions to someday have climbing gym in Flint.  I found myself staring up at the tall smokestack, envisioning in my mind’s eye the view of downtown and surrounding area from such a great height every time we cut through the back of the school to get to the library, or boys’ school.  I ran hill sprints to train for British Columbia beside the multi-story, single-pane, factory windows, giving the building it’s rugged character.  Do we call it ‘The Boiler Room’ or just ‘Flint City Climbing?’  We could teach jumaring ropes up the center of the tower, top out for a view and rappel the outside of the stack.  Another day I was pacing out the Pythagorean theorem and gaging angles to calculate the height… I settled on 135 feet.  That would be enough height to for a sport multipitch route on the exterior.  How do I sheathe the brick?  Is it safe?  What material would hold up to the Michigan winter weather?

If you have been in any climbing convos with me in the last few years you likely have heard me talk about someday having a climbing gym in the boiler building.  Is it trespassing if the door is open?  Maybe just a few steps inside to see the space.  It was rough.  I later called the Flint Public School Maintenance team and got an official tour.  It was better than I imagined… the steel industrial stairs took you out from the entrance ‘lobby and store’ to the main floor where the musty space climbed unhindered to at least 35 to 40 feet above the concrete floor.  The building was divided into a few sections where a bouldering room could be separated from the main top ropes.  Access to the tower would be exterior and obviously would be a special event and take time to develop; take it slow Matt.  Any thoughts on the subject, God.  Not my will but Yours be done.

Summer turned to fall, which gave way to winter, which reluctantly yielded back to spring.  One year, two years; I don’t even know how long I’ve been dreaming about a gym at the boiler building—students high school and college age, community being built around the hub of preserved history from 1923—right in the heart of the Cultural Center in Flint.  It was perfect, until one day this spring I was leaving the library after meeting with some guys for a bible study.  A work crew was aggressively pounding poles for chain-link fencing through the back parking lot that eventually made its way all the way around the entire high school, adjacent middle school, and boiler building.  Canvas banners covered the entire perimeter, which couldn’t have been cheap, so this was the real deal.  It was coming down.  All of it except for the entrance structure of the high school.  Boiler tower, factory windows, bouldering room, front lobby and store; dreams of a climbing gym in the Cultural Center—leveled to dirt.  Hauled away in Bolle Contracting semis where it would be crushed, ground to powder, or recycled into something profitable. 

So, what of the dream?  Is it crushed?  Yes, it was hard to see the boiler building fall heavily to the earth, never to be rebuilt again.  The mark of a time where hot water and steam powered our industrial innovations instead of lithium, plastic, and computers.  Was my dream ground to powder?  Well, maybe the boiler building has been reduced to dust, but God also formed man from the dust of the earth.  So, if God is involved in this dream, then anything is possible.  Then, there is the idea of this dream being recycled into something profitable.  “What does it profit a man”, the Bible says in Mark 8:36, “to gain the whole world and yet lose his own soul?”  The dream of a gym is only a means to an end for me.  It’s not about a profitable business.  Rather, it’s a place to connect with young people, share in the struggles of a bouldering problem on the wall, and talk about some of the struggles we face in life.  It’s an opportunity for school, work, family stress to take a backseat and for common ground to be established.  It’s a place for me to share about how I can look someone in the eye and tell them that I love them—because Christ first loved me.  You see?   Brick and mortar may fall and it may continue to change the landscape all around me, but the dreams in our hearts outlast the perceived reality of our surroundings.  Don’t quit when your dreams feel like powder blowing away in the fall breeze, it’s only making room for something greater.

-Matt