Smiling Rock

 

I found a flat rock, slightly overhanging the river, and sat. It was warm from the afternoon sun, which I felt now on my back and neck.

Looking around me I saw a few possibilities for nice photographs, but I had taken them all on previous visits. I set my camera down and closed my eyes. I wondered briefly if fiction had to be ridiculous, then the rushing sound of the river just below cleared my mind.

First the sound of water flowing over rocks, then I heard wind through the aspen branches and wind making pines creak and sigh. The water and the wind began to blend so I wasn't’t certain which was rushing, which flowing, which sighing. I heard the dry grass near me as the small stalks brushed together in a breeze, up the hill behind me a high, clear chirp rang out over the valley from within the warm, smelly belly of a marmot.

The sun’s warmth spread through my back unraveling knots, easing tension, making me soft and drowsy. I heard birds peeping and flitting by all around me, the trees and the river all the while saying: “Shhhh.” Listen, just listen. I took a picture with my ears.

When the sun had gone the sky would blacken and the stars would spike out of the cold night sky like shining, icy jewels. The river and the wind would still chant with the trees and the grass would fill with sounds of quick, furtive scurryings. Rocks would topple and thump down hill, disturbed by hooves, or larger feet with claws; the hunt for dinner would begin. As the sky shimmered and twinkled, as trees sighed and the river sang, mingling its breath with that of the night and forming thick mists above its banks, some would feed and some would die.

Elsewhere someone would make a choice, someone would eat dinner with family or friends at a table set with dishes, someone would run out of toilet paper, someone would fall asleep in front of their television. Still there would be mad dashes in tall grass for a morsel of food or a nice nesting twig; the mists would thicken over the flowing water as the night grew old and the air began to take on a fresh and pale scent. The grass around my flat rock overhanging the river would thicken with frost as the night’s inhabitants finished up their business.

The stars would fade to tiny pinholes in an opaque morning sky as birds began to wake and the sun would creep up and up, higher and higher, until it peeked over the eastern mountain tops and its warmth began, finally, to flood back into the river’s valley. Squirrels would come winding down their trees chattering wildly, the frost would melt from the grass and leave the earth chocolaty and rich smelling.

The sun would hit my eyelids, still lowered over my eyes, and melt the frost from the lashes. From the delicate morning moisture on my skin fungus would sprout, perhaps hardening eventually and forming lichen over my eyes, over the smile that had formed and never ended, from the moment I began to listen. The rock would no longer be flat and alone, I would have taken my place on it. Then when people walked along the dirt road beside the river, if they looked carefully, they might comment on the rock that looked like a person sitting by the river with a big smile on their face. Maybe it would even come to be called Smiling Rock.

~Dexter

"If you find a cat hair in your food just....umm.... just pick it out and continue eating."

~Dexter