Well, to make a long story short, Mr. Murphy wasn't there. In fact, if there's
an anti-Murphy's law, it was in full force yesterday, beginning with the
crystal-clear weather that belied the torrential downpours we'd had the day
before. If the turning-groove operation went swimmingly, this one went
baby-pool swimmingly.
After three or four tests, allowing them to get a feel for the ropes, the
pullers brought the obelisk upright on the first try in less than two minutes.
At precisely 3:12 p.m., after three attempts over a period of five years, NOVA
had its standing obelisk, very likely the first raised since Egyptian times
using a sandpit and ropes. ("Vindicated" is all Roger Hopkins, who had
long advocated a version of this method, had to say before treating me to one
of his Cheshire-cat grins.)
As if in payback for all the effort of both Brown's team and the folks at
Fletcher Granite, who had worked overtime to acquire and manhandle the obelisk,
build the ramp, and otherwise make this project happen, the obelisk assumed a
whole new presence once it reached the vertical. I found it astonishing what
just a few degrees made in how I felt about it. Before it was just a rock at an
angle. Now it was an obelisk. It had taken on life and stood proudly showing it
off to the dozens of participants and spectators who quickly crowded around it,
palming its roughened surface, peering into the now-vacated turning groove,
running their eyes up its perfectly straight sides.
The NOVA obelisk shortly after its raising.
"Totally anticlimactic!" said a beaming Michael Barnes, the NOVA film's
executive producer, as he gave Cort a congratulatory hug. Drawing me out of my
reverie, his words drove home the complete failure of my mission - and the utter success of Rick Brown's operation. I
doubt I could bring the edge of Mullen's hypothetical camp bottle down onto a
table any smoother than they had. There was neither sound nor vibration nor any
other indication whatsoever when it touched down onto the pedestal
stone.
"I kept saying it would go at that point," Mark Lehner told me late in the day,
referring to that critical angle when one might have expected the
obelisk to start picking up speed. "But it never did,
because of the utter control they had over the ropes."
Then, off the cuff, he summed up the entire operation in one
of those quotable lines he's noted for:
"Sacrificing drama of the moment for a dramatic
result that might last thousands of years."
Hear, hear. As we admired the obelisk backlighted by the early-evening sun, I
felt certain that after three attempts, we had finally done the ancients proud.
Workers and watchers alike mob the
obelisk minutes after it stood up for the first time.
The NOVA obelisk shortly after its raising.