September 30, 2006

• Green Pool

  Bouyed only by his advancing middle-age spread, he’s floating.

  He’s floating in a creek, high up in the mountains. It’s odd, because most mountain streams are tiny enough that you’d never be able to float in them. But this one forms a sandy-bottomed, emerald pool below a small waterfall, in a ten-foot crack between two slabs of black granite which reach skyward like the twin towers before they fell.

  These boulders will fall, too, eventually. He’s thinking about this. The water is cold but the sun is warm; it’s a time in between. The boulders will crumble as all things do, but they haven’t yet. Or rather, they have. They have crumbled enough to form this pool.

  The sun only shines straight down here for about an hour a day. This is that hour. Darkness lifts gradually, and then there’s sun, and then it fades gradually. There’s only the narrow sliver of time overhead. Juniper and red cedar cling to the microscopic layer of soil. Mossy green carpets breathe in and out for that hour of sunlight.

  Bigfoot was sighted here. There’s a story, he’s thinking about it. A story someone told him a while back about bigfoot being up on the banks near here. He doesn’t believe in bigfoot, just like he doesn’t believe in Santa Claus. It’s fun to think about, though. The twin towers and bigfoot. Scarcely imaginable.

  The water is very, very cold, and he won’t be able to soak much longer. Or maybe he should quit soaking now, because it’s difficult to tell. Hypothermia, too, comes on gradually, and then all the sudden you’re in bad shape. The gentle roar of the waterfall…

  When he was hiking, he had to come to terms with the shadow that followed him. Not bigfoot. There was a shadow. A thing that embodied… He doesn’t want to think about it, but it was there. A figure. Behind him. Swimming underneath him now. But on the trail it was hiking behind him.

  Some people are just there. You meet someone and they don’t really say anything, but they make whole arguments just by looking at you. You say something and someone just looks at you in a certain way and you know what they mean.

  And that’s this shadow, walking along behind. Scary and meaningful. Something that will one day allow itself to catch up, allow itself to say a single word. Because it’s really him, and he knows it. He has a silent message for himself.

  He’s soaking in the pool, wondering what that word will be. Whether the shadow is a friend or an enemy. Why should a word make something a friend or an enemy? He stands on the gravel floor of the creek, waist-deep. Trudges to the sand bar and lays on a rock in the sun.

  

  • 2:22 am
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