A late summer apple

Where does the time go, lost among those days misspent with the clutter and the chatter, the staring screens, the abyss that gazes back. On this afternoon I walk away from the distractions and up the shaded lane. I seat myself on and among a jumble of stones whose artful arrangement hints at forces older than we, to search.

The sounds of young children, unseen, echo through the woods. In the field behind their house they play, watched by their mother. She calls from time to time in a maternal code that ensures safety and good conduct. Across the creek bovine mothers speak to their calves on the hillside in the same language of care and nurture: “Stay close, come back, make sure I can see you.”

In the far distance the roar of traffic, then squealing brakes, a thud, and a day ends not as one had hoped. Barely heard shouts, accusations too removed to understand, though the meaning is clear. I wait but hear no more.

A tractor starts on the far side of the hill. It’s a reminder to me of what still needs doing down the lane. But I am content to leave the hurrying, the toing and froing, to others for now. I sit contemplatively, in penance for my own sad contribution to this made world, trying to understand.

This rock onto which I have climbed pays me no mind. It may not recognize that we are kin of sorts—we have both shared matter from the start. Even as our folk traversed the plains, the deserts, the forests, this family of rock stayed rooted loyally to this hill, and even before. It has endured long enough to ignore all but the rain, whose falling is a conversation that has etched a message in a language I cannot decipher. How petty our concerns must seem to the stone, which if not infinite is certainly immemorial.

I relight my cigar and settle back to listening as the summer cicadas begin to call one another. Everywhere around me the living reach out to their own. A spider weaves a web next to my boot, evidence that the dream of “go big or go home” does not just originate with us. Yellow jackets hover and seemingly confer at the entrance to their nest under the rocks. As the minutes pass I begin to suspect that even the trees around me speak in their own unintelligible Entish language, and that only because it takes so very long to say something meaningful, for a life as brief as mine it goes unheard.

Another car passes on the highway. It toots in recognition to an oncoming vehicle, evidence that we have, cargo cult­–like, imitated the gods blindly in making a false imitation of creation. Artificial intelligence indeed. The sound of the tires fades around a bend. I’m left in peace.

I stare at the glowing end of my cigar, now near the end, reach over and stub it out on the boulder next to me. I leave it atop the rock as an offering, much like the squirrels who have left evidence of their evening feasts cracked next to it. I get to my feet and slowly walk back to the house and barn. I leave the stones behind me to continue in their ageless communion. It is time for me to feed the hogs.

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Note: My book from Front Porch Republic, Kayaking with Lambs, Notes from an East Tennessee Farmer, is on sale here for $15.99. Send Bezos to Mars and buy a copy or three.

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