It was cloudy, foggy and overcast with winter on it's way, but I didn't care. I wanted to walk down by the lake. The temperature was pleasantly warm despite the deceptive view from my inside my home. I like this time of year, that in between time, when the weather keeps the crowds locked away inside bars or at home watching football, but a handful of people still find the time to enjoy the last bit of tolerable weather. The smiles of passerby's seem much more sincere this time of year.
I started noticing the landscape more and began making pictures inside my head. Regretfully, I don't go on photo walks like I did in my youth, but my mind still frames and makes pictures. I never noticed these reed-like plants. They were still so green and full of life and everywhere. I wonder what kind of properties they have when they dry and what purpose they could have after the winter winds bring them to their seasonal death.
A path in between the reeds leads me down to the water. Walking along the shore staring at the ground, I spot the most perfect rock. It is the smoothest rock I have ever picked up and completely flat. An overwhelming sense of calm surrounds me and I rub my thumb over this circular rock and stare out at the muted blue lake meeting the out-of-focus overcast sky. I decide I will hold onto this rock until it is time to let it go.
I may make a step or two before I see another rock that calls to me. I pick it up and brush the sand clear revealing its true personality and history. 'Is this an arrowhead?' My thumb presses against it's point. 'It's got to be, this sharp edge was purposefully created.' Even though there is slight pain, my thumb keeps pressing up against the point of this arrowhead and my mind contemplates disagreements, war, survival, and history.
I continue walking along the beach, staring at the debris in the sand with the calm, flat, smooth rock in one hand and sharp arrowhead in the other hand thinking about the extremes of duality. About to turn around from my introspective exploration along the shore, I spot a white piece of sea glass, one of my favorite rock collecting finds. I take another step back towards the concrete path when I see another piece of green sea glass. I begin walking around in a circle and find a handful of sea glass pieces in a heavy concentration.
Sea glass has always been a sense of wonder for me. Walking back home with my pocket full of these broken pieces of glass worn smooth by the passage of time, wind, sand and water I think of my own memory. Memories once so sharp and clear become worn around the edges over time.
I found the description of your walk quite personal yet candidly open. My partner & I also walk shorelines looking for beach glass and whatever other interesting shaped rocks, crystals, fossils, or even driftwood we may find there. Not to pry, but seeing that your bio describes your living in Greendale WI, was your walk along Lake Michigan's shoreline? Also, does the term "clockie" mean anything to you relative to the stones you might find there?
ReplyDeleteI was raised near the Lake in the '50s and spent many days as a child playing there, bringing home enough rocks to fill the numerous empty cigar boxes my father and grandfather would generate that became stored in a corner of our basement and cast away when our home was sold many years later. Today we do the same along the shores of the Bay of Fundy Nova Scotia where now our beach-found treasures are strewn about the floors, shelves, and drawers of our vacation home there as if they actually had some greater value than the curiosities they were among the other objects we had chosen to ignore and left behind in situ.