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Rock

 

 

I remember hiking down an old riverbed around Eastertime one year by myself.  It was a perfect day with clear,  modest heat and an impossibly blue sky.

As I walked,  the old riverbed opened into fabulous  ’dishes’  of sandstone;  large spanses of really smooth,  slightly concave places where the water used to just slide over without making a fuss.

This place was hypnotic.   Held all around by 30′ canyon walls with a few delicate willow trees  pushing up through the rock in places.  It was silent,  felt safe and I never wanted to leave.  I took all my clothes off and laid down in the middle of this old riverbed on my stomach.   I don’t really cry much but that day I turned my cheek to the rock and sobbed my guts out.   I asked the stone to take everything in me that felt like  ’too much to hold.’  At that time I was unhappy in a marriage and confused and lost.   Somehow,  the power in this rock place I had stumbled on helped me remember my essential self apart from any schism I felt at home or anywhere else.

The rock actually did take and hold all the overwhelm and emotional and physical upheaval I was carrying that was just too much for one human to be expected to manage by herself.  So that rock let me know in a big way that I didn’t have to.

On that day I started to understand that rocks,  in their deeply contracted density,  have the ability to hold… they can hold for us and they also hold archives of knowledge we have no clue about.

When I had left all my tears there in the riverbed,  dressed and started back,  I saw a little wall of rock stuck back aways in a canyon hollow. When I went to look I found an old,  old dwelling.   Someone else had known the power of that place.

I think we get called to go where we need to go if we listen.   To this day,  if I feel less-than-strong in any way,  I remember the warmth of that rock on my wet cheek and stomach and it helps me move on.

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