In the spring of 1862, the Provo River charged through the valley like it owned the place-because, truth be told, it did.
Flooded with snowmelt, it ran loud, fast, and full of unstoppable purpose. There were no bridges back then, no warning signs or detours—just water carving its path, indifferent to anything in its way. If you lived on one side and needed something from the other, you waited. Or gave up. Those were the options.
Unless you were Isaac O. Wall.
Isaac was the local mail carrier. Which sounds simple until you remember that in 1862, “mail carrier” meant saddling up with a pouch full of letters and prayers and hoping nature didn’t try to kill you on the way to the next cabin. Most people accepted that the river was impassable during spring runoff. “We’ll get it to you when we can,” was the accepted mood.
But Isaac wasn’t most people.
He wanted to get the mail across the river. He wasn’t just trying to finish his route—he wanted people on the other side to stay connected. That was the dream. It didn’t come with applause or headlines. Just a vision of something working better than it currently did, and the unwillingness to wait for someone else to fix it.
So, he built a cable.
Not metaphorically. A real cable. He strung it between two trees—one on each side of the river—and rigged a pulley system so he could send mailbags gliding across like some kind of pioneer zipline. No ferry. No fording. No dramatic river-crossing scenes. Just rope, ingenuity, and a refusal to let mud and current decide when the mail got through.
It wasn’t elegant. It wasn’t permanent. But it worked.
And honestly, that’s what dreaming big actually looks like most of the time. Not a logo. Not a pitch deck. Not standing on stage in a blazer talking about disruption. Just someone in a valley, staring at a flooded mess of a river, thinking, “There has to be a way.”
Isaac didn’t have resources. He didn’t have help from the government or backing from investors. He wasn’t building a business empire. He just saw something that mattered to people—connection—and made sure it didn’t get swept downstream.
That kind of dream doesn’t always come with a business plan. But it’s the kind that keeps a town running.
There were real risks. If that cable snapped, the mail was gone. If the pulley jammed halfway across, someone had to go fix it. The Provo in spring isn’t exactly known for its hospitality. This wasn’t a fun science project—it was dangerous, improvised, and necessary.
And yet, it lasted. Long enough to make a difference. Long enough to remind people on both sides of the river that they hadn’t been forgotten. Long enough to prove that even without a bridge, someone still cared enough to find a way across.
Eventually, of course, bridges were built. Roads were paved. Systems improved. That’s the part people remember. But the reason those things came later is because people like Isaac showed they were worth building. Big dreams don’t always need to last forever. Sometimes they just need to last long enough to get something moving.
We’re told that dreaming big means shooting for the stars or changing the world. But most of the time, it means trying something slightly crazy, slightly inconvenient, and entirely necessary. It means not waiting for perfect conditions. It means rigging a cable with whatever you’ve got and seeing if it holds.
And that’s the part that still sticks with me. Isaac didn’t build a bridge. He built a workaround. He solved the problem with what he had—because the dream wasn’t about permanence. It was about momentum.
I think about that every time someone tells me they’re waiting for the “right time” to launch something, start something, fix something. The right time isn’t a calendar date. The right time is when the river gets in your way and you decide you’re not going to sit on the bank and wait for someone to carry you across.
Isaac’s cable probably looked a little ridiculous. And I love that. Because most great things do at the beginning. But when people say dreaming big is about boldness and vision, I think what they really mean is: you care enough to look at a problem and say, “Okay. I’ll go first.”
So, if your own version of a river is standing between you and the thing you’ve been thinking about, remember this: it doesn’t need to be pretty. It doesn’t need to last forever. It just needs to hold long enough to carry something important across.
That’s dreaming big.
And in Heber Valley, we’ve been doing that for a long time.
