Remember the childhood tale of Jack and the Beanstalk? Jack was a dreamer. When he came upon the opportunity to obtain some magic beans, he seized the moment.

The fictitious character, Jack, was doing something many of us fail to do - think big.

No, we’re not talking about "big" talk as is found in Texas where the residents believe anything must be better if it’s "Biggie sized."

What we’re speaking about is thinking about things that may seem impossible or almost impossible. Thinking big requires a rare combination of vision and guts.

If you look around our area, we need some more folks to "think big." The Tri-State is a fairly clean canvas on which to work.

Fortunately, some people are thinking big. The developers working to get the RiverWalk project off the ground are seeing the big picture. The developers looked at the rough scrabble low land just west of the 29th Street Bridge from Proctorville to Huntington, W.Va., and they saw potential. They had that same glint in their eyes that Jack had when offered the magic beans.

Visionaries focus beyond the problems and see the possibilities. In the example of the RiverWalk, the site itself has a number of problems, chiefly that it is in the 100-year flood plain.

"Who in their right mind would want to build something there?" naysayers might ask. But people who "think big" look beyond that and say, "We’ve got dirt. We can simply raise the grade."

Any problem can be overcome with a little determination and vision.

The Tri-State, particularly Lawrence County, has some amazing quality of life issues. We just need a few more visionaries to capitalize on them. Can you imagine what the county would be like if, in 10 years, Ironton’s downtown is revitalized, South Point is the county’s high-tech industrial center and Proctorville is a booming, modern community?

All of that may be possible if we can all think big a little more often.