The Oburacy of Rocks

I finally unpacked all (well most) of the rocks we collected from the North Shore of Lake Superior last summer. Quite a variety, most molded into ovals by the constant churning of the water. I could spend a lot of time trying to discern their specific types and names, but probably won't. Maybe I will research a few, maybe not. It doesn't matter a lot to me, and nothing to them.

They are now spared from the sculpting waves and icy cold water, and instead silently sit atop the rustic bookcase that I (ahem) built recently. Nothing physical affecting them now but almost imperceptible air currents, bits of sunshine, and a gentle rain of dust. If they were sensate, I picture them in a state of rest. They offer mute testimony to the passage of time and, since most are metamorphic, to the affects of unimaginable heat and pressure and time. To be picked up from time to time, wondered about and marveled at, then set back.

I wonder what will happen to them at the point in which this household is broken up into sharing among heirs and then an estate sale (which I always see as a garage sale by dead people). Perhaps the rocks will be sold at $3 a small bag, and some rockhound will find a treasure. Or perhaps they will be tossed in the huge waste container that will likely sit in the driveway.

Either way, it won't matter much to the rocks whether their ultimate descent to gravel is delayed by display until the next passing, or by being tossed into a landfill. Because time is almost incomprehensible in the context of rocks. All this, my finding them, their display here, whatever happens next, will be but a faint flash in geologic time, and likely at some point they will emerge again, almost intact, and glacially continue the journey to their ultimate end.

Barring of course some cosmic event of unimaginable power, like finding themselves in the heart of a volcanic eruption or our sun bursting into a huge ball of heat, which would be another metamorphic event.

But for now they sit, obdurately existing while my time slides by and I move ever closer to my own metamorphosis.