Feeling my place in time.
I recently waded to a stone outcropping in the South Toe River, near Penland, NC. There’s nothing like an ancient river rolling by amid weathered rocks to get you pondering your time and place on this earth.
I respectfully made my way along the massive stones - some worn smooth, some dangerously slick, some craggy and covered in lichens that looked like maps I should follow. Fools gold sparkled in the sun. Strings of aquatic life made patterns in shallow pools carved by millennia of rushing water. If you let your perspective shift, some of the surroundings defy time and scale.
Close-ups become panoramic landscapes. Light plays in swirling eddies creating abstract worlds. Epochs and eras inhabit the same calendar as seasons. On this September day it was evident Summer was daring Fall to step forward. I laid down on the rocks thinking about beauty and bliss and how brief our visit to this vast wildness is. I watched the sun set on one more day, then made my way home to make supper. Here’s some of what I saw, and felt.
