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Jan
29
Ways of Thinking
Filed Under Nature, Ruminations
As I look out the window (I took typing in high school, so I can type without looking at the keyboard - which is good and bad. Good cause it allows me to mentally multi-task. Bad ’cause it allows me to mentally multi-task.), this is what I see:
I look at this rock, and I think about how geologists tell us that you can tell a lot about previous water levels in an area by the size of the boulders now visible. I think about snow melting and how that’s filling the falls and ultimately the lake and other bodies of water. i think about erosion and how the landscape is etched and carved and reshaped by rushing water.
And just about as quickly, here’s what else I think:
Once upon many, many floods ago, this very rock named Grollie skipped and tumbled downhill, adventuring along on the Wet Express. The jolly, cheerful waters were plentiful and made good time as they carried Grollie and a gaggle of other rocks and sticks and trees and bits of nature in various shapes and sizes down the hill in search of a place to settle with other water.
When she reached this very spot of earth, Grollie was able to touch hard land and she knew - in ways rocks know things - that it was time for her to leave the Wet Express. Grollie settled right here because this spot felt like home to her.
Choosing to rest on her smaller part, Grollie wiggled what would become her bottom into the sand and shallow water, leaving her broadest side open and available. Available to catch snow when it falls, holding on to it until higher temperatures melt it away. Available to birdseed, holding it until the birds have devoured it. Available to catch a bit of rain, holding onto it only until it evaporates.
One day, eons of floods after Grollie came to live here, two human hikers happened by. Seeing Grollie, the woman squealed as though she’d just seen a long lost friend. She took off her shoes, took off her socks, and waded out to rest on Grollie’s broad side. The man stayed on the dry land beside the water, put his hands on his hips, and asked sternly, “What are you doing?”
“I am going to rest for a bit. Maybe even take a nap in the sun on this delicious boulder. Join me?”
“Are you sure you want to do that? Sounds like a dangfool idea if I ever heard one. Think about it: that rock looks like it might just tumble on down the hill the moment you touch it, taking you right along with it.”
The woman acted like she didn’t hear a thing he said. She just smiled, sat down on Grollie, and stretched herself out. The woman’s hands became her pillow and the sun her blanket, and before long she was snoring a soft melody.
When both the hikers woke up from their nature nap - her from Grollie’s available side; he from his sitting nap against a tree stump - he grumbled about the chance she’d taken resting on “that damn rock. You’re just lucky it defied gravity for a few minutes this afternoon. Perched there so precariously. Why it’s a wonder you’re even here to hear me now. By all rights, I should be peeling you off of the bottom of the lake at the bottom of this fall by now. That was not a smart thing you did.”
The woman said nothing as she stood from tying her shoes. She just picked her up walking stick, blew a kiss to Grollie, and walked on up the hill, feeling more rested than she’d felt in a good, long while and looking forward to many, many more afternoon naps with Grollie.
And so it goes: my brain, spreading out like the vines in my blog header. I took that picture on a family trip. Chose it for my blog header ’cause I like the way that vine branches out in all directions, blooming leaves sometimes, growing bare vine at others. And whose to say, really, which thoughts bear the blooms and which thoughts lay down vines on their way to something else?
P.S. In keeping with today’s theme of different ways of thinking, here’s somebody who hears a different set of words when looking at her pictures of vines.
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