submission: the rock

The Happy and Sad boulder gardens in Bishop were born from fields of ash that flew out of a volcano seven hundred thirty thousand years ago.

The uphill big brother granite Buttermilks are just tiny remnant crumbs of giant features that have been fragmenting at the hand of the bitter Owens River Valley elements for the last ninety million years. It took millions of years for the rock to harden from its past life as magma, let alone erode to the shape of a boulder problem us tiny humans can stand on top of.

What am I learning from being audience to ninety million year old creations?

Well my grandmother lived past ninety and held me when I was two days old. What I learned from her, as I grew, aged and wrinkled, was specific. She knew I didn’t like to be swaddled, but knew it was probably good for me. She lived to exalt the sweetness of life and would make me my favorite dessert to teach me that same devotion. I cried, she rubbed my back in circles.

The Buttermilks will never rub my back.

They will sit in stern contemplation. I imagine them putting in earplugs to put up with the bluetooth speakers. Our fingers tickle their underbellies, our shoes mark their cheeks. Never annoyed. Are you shouting, they might say. Are you still falling on that problem? What, you split your tip? Sorry, we can’t hear you. Sorry, we’re busy dissolving. Sorry, we’re here broadcasting to the sky, waiting for the sign she still loves us, her wet response you call rain. Her love destroys us, one grain at a time. But as we sit here, purring in our own ancient perfection, we can’t wait to be nothing. That’ll mean she heard us.

Love always wins. That’s what I’ve learned from the Buttermilks.