Toppling Boulders

Above the tree line there’s granite sun warmed and gray, granite and blue pools of ice water, granite melting glacier, granite peaks and ridges white against the blue sky. Granite is everywhere. 

We crested the ridge and caught a glimpse of the lake down below. It was probably Upper McCabe or Roosevelt or the Conness Lakes or some other lake that felt as far away. We had our poles and some tackle and and hope of finding some native trout that might be swimming around in the high remote lakes. Trailless we wandered using Conness and Northpeak to navigate. From boulder to boulder, searching for my next purchase only after leaping, I flew. I landed and stopped looking back for Dad and felt the boulder totter back into place. When Dad caught up we teetered and tottered on the massive piece of granite. We looked around, alone in the high Sierra Nevada mountains with nothing but the granite, the glaciers, the lakes, and the itch of mischief in our minds.

One...two...three...huurumph! It rose, slowed, and almost stopped whilst crossing it’s apex. We held our breath, time slowed, muscles tense, connected by will to the stone that had rolled out of reach. Eyes wide we watched what we had set in motion. It fell toward the steep slope and crashed down on the rocks below it, it’s momentum lifting the other end high into the air and over. End over end it accelerated down the ridge pulling lesser boulders in it’s path. The faint brimstone and gunpowder smell of crushed granite swirled around us. Booms and cracks and and their echoes and the echoes of echoes filled the air. The loss of silence was crippling. We were deaf to the whispers of the mountains and felt the vulnerability and the unseen eyes on the back of our necks. Then it was over, the last few pebbles finding rest, the dust settled, and all was again still and quiet. When the last echo died and the last dust wisp settled there was nothing to give evidence to the passage of the stone. All the power and noise absorbed back into the endless piles of boulders and into us. It infused us with strength. We exhaled. That was awesome! Excitedly we looked for another candidate for more bolder crushing mayhem.

Banging and crashing and crunching the next boulder careened down the ridge toward the valley below. Our eyes followed it’s trajectory, our hearts sank. There was a vivid splash of green and brown against the gray. A tree, knotted and gnarled, weather-beaten and old, alone. The boulder crashed left and right fine tuning it’s path toward the tree. To grow in such a barren place, to survive. Out of nowhere, it was lost, it didn’t belong, but it fit. With every ricochet we willed the boulder away from the tree. But our Kung fu was no match for that of the boulder. The cracking and splitting of wood stabbed unmistakably through the roar of rumbling rock.  The boulder settled. The silence was lonely and thick and blanketed the gray landscape.

~Aaron~