On Moving Rocks

I am on day 2 of moving rocks. Quite often I’m thinking of the song, “I collect rocks.” A children’s song, but it belongs to me too. Now my rock collection is being dismantled. I need grass to run on, rather than more than rocks with which to build walls. 
I go outside, not in the early morning, because Paul Vike has already been operating his bob cat for two hours when I get there. He is off his machine moving rocks by hand. I say to him, “Can I help?”

He says, “I can’t pat this down with all of these large rocks on the area.”

I say, “I’ll move them.” It looks to me as if it is a job I can do. I am right. I live on a gravel pit. I’ve been moving rocks for twenty-five years. He drives off to do work somewhere else, and I throw enough rocks out of that space that I’m starting to think about getting a rake. Looks good to me.

I’m wearing one of those vests, yellow, with a reflective tape “X” across the back. Trell gave that to me. This is my first real wearing of it. I had always wanted one of those vests, and now I had a real reason to use it. When that thought came through my head about my love for my reflective bet, I also thought about the winter camouflage hunting parka that I had wanted to buy this Fall. When I asked Bonnie and Mary about it, neither of them showed any enthusiasm, and in fact Mary said to me, “That jacket carries with it political implications. Just don’t do it. Just don’t purchase it, no matter what the price.” It had been 75% off. Hard for me to pass up a deal like that. At any rate. I am happy in my vest. I continue to wear it until I get too hot. Then I take off an underlayer, put back on the vest and keep working.

After a while he comes back. Paul takes his Bobcat and drags his bucket over the area where I have been working. He also takes the bucket and drops it down along the edge of the rock wall he has built, firming up the soil there. The area is now level. Not just one, but three picnic tables can be placed there. However, first, I must pick up the new cantaloupe-sized rocks that have surfaced. I have to rock some of them out of the ground. I am good at that. Only one of them needs a pick-axe. I put a misshapen piece of granite on that spot, and I can feel an inward giggle as I think, “Sure a good thing I took Geology 200 in 1958.” I can identify the kinds of rocks I am moving.

The sound of the day is the beeping of the Bobcat as it goes in reverse. I know to keep out of his way. But he moves across the property in a zig-zag fashion that I can’t predict, so I keep alert to that sound just in case he can’t see me in my reflective clothing.

Every time I think I’m finished, a new spot to clear pops into my mind. After all, there is a half-acre here and not all of it is rocks. Miranda has told me I can ask Paul Vike to clear any brush that is under six feet in height.

Glen and I have already looked at a Sopalily Bush but just to the west of it is the stretch that was holding the fill that I am using. That hump of fill was put there twenty-five years ago when Kelvin was cleaning off the drive way and needed a place to dump that material. I have a small imaginary conversation with him, and say, “Wow. How did you know I would be needing fill someday?”

Over the years, large saplings, some might call them young trees, have grown up in that dirt. It’s easy for Paul to pick them out, shake the roots out, and put them in the burn pile which is now probably twelve feet high. He smooths out the area just above the eight white gardening pots, compliments of Ron Treleaven. Paul says, “Now you have your tenting spot.” I say to him, “I hope I am not the one who has to use it.”

He said, “Your house. You tell people where to sleep.”

I laugh.

I already know Paul was born in 1965, the year the first panabode was built. I also know he is the 9th of 13 children. He knows about big families. I tell him that there are 40 first cousins and when you add in spouses and children of children those of us who are will enjoy the beauty he is creatng now might number 100.

I’m trying to pry a rock out of the ground. I’ve had to go to my hands and knees. I know to keep my wheelbarrow close by. My new hip doesn’t have the strength yet to let me pop up easily from the ground, and I have to use the wheelbarrow as an aide for daily living. The wheelbarrow is always full of rocks, so I know it will support my weight.

I know the wheelbarrow is secure.

I look up. Marla and Bonnie are there. Bonnie has gone in the house, but Marla approaches me and asks me how I am doing. I tell her, “Right now I am fighting with a rock and I think it is going to win.” I am right. The rock does win. I can only rock it so that the earth around it moves, but it is not coming out of the earth until I give it more serious attention – probably my pick axe. The pick axe may first have been Doral’s. Then it was Kelvin’s. Now it is mine. I laugh because I am thinking about the provenance of a pick axe.

I stand up so that I can speak face to face with Marla. Bonnie and she have just done an hour’s walk down the Grandfather’s Trail. They have walked along the Upper Ravine Road, then down the Ravine Trail and then crossed the stream so that they can climb the hill to get to “Trail’s End”. I think about how naming conventions can mix a hiker up. For us, the “Trail’s End” sign is just the beginning of the old Sicamous Road, now grown over so that cars can’t move along it, but still a grand trail for hikers.

Marla and I chat about the changes COVID has made to our lives. She says she misses sociability – the chance to get together with friends. I tell her to come out here often with Bonnie. The trails are gorgeous every time of the year.

Marla leaves and I turn my attention to the deep ruts and the joy of moving rocks.

Arta