The man stands on the edge of a remote mountain lake, alongside his small daughter. It’s the kind of lake you can’t get to by car. And perhaps that’s exactly the way it should be. There are no docks, and there are no boats. There are no cabins. There are only pine trees monopolizing the extraordinary view, sharing it on occasion with a hiker who takes the journey down a long, rocky path that is sometimes littered with white tufts of hair from a mountain goat. It’s a quiet, serene place that offers only frigid glacial water and room to let your brain wander the shores of your inner soul.
Where the gentle waves roll up to greet the land, there are stones. So many stones. Mostly small and oval. The sizes vary only slightly; the smallest being pebble size and the largest easily fitting in the palm of a child’s hand. The girl stoops down to pick one up.
She immediately notices how smooth the stone is. It’s void of edges or burrs or corners. It is so smooth, she wonders if it is real. Maybe it was manufactured at some rock-making factory and sent here. But assuredly, it’s not. It’s as real as you and I.
The girl picks up a handful of similar stones, noting the glassy traits of each and every one. She then takes note of the millions of other rocks that line the edge, as well as those that stretch into the water, making up the lake floor. They are all identical in their smoothness.
“Why are all the rocks smooth?”
The man, who had previously been distracted by the larger panoramic view of the mountain reflecting in the water, the deep green hue of the pine trees and the vast amount of sky above, looks toward his feet. Only then does he notice the stones. He picks one up and considers it.
“The reason the stones are so smooth,” he begins, “has to do with two things, really. Water being the first. And time being the second. You see, at some point, every one of those stones was different. They were all edged. Jagged. They were shapes that didn’t exist in human definitions of shapes. They were pointy. They were larger. They were sharp. They had angles. Maybe some were even connected to each other. They were unique. They were unlike any other rock around it.
“But then the water came. Yes, water which means life. And the water pushed the rocks around, shoving them into other rocks. Grinding them into one another. Creating friction. Removing edges. Removing uniqueness. Dulling them. And over time, lots and lots and lots of time in the water, they all became the same. Indistinguishable from one another. Void of character.”
The girl squats down, resting her chin on her knees. She runs her hand over the carpet of stones.
The girl then says, “So all the things that made them special were rubbed away by water knocking them against other rocks over a lot of time?”
“That’s exactly right,” the man says.
The girl continues picking through the stones, fruitlessly searching for one that is different. “Do you think the rocks want to be like all the other rocks?”
The man chuckles, but not loud enough that the girl can hear. “I don’t know,” he replies. “I would think not. But sometimes, that’s just what the world does.”
“Why would the world do that?”
“I don’t think the world means to do that. It just happens.”
The girl stands, seeking out a fresh patch of shoreline rocks to sift through, stomping on a bug with her dusty sneakers as she does, one sock slumped down around her ankle thanks to aging elastic. She continues for several minutes, dedicated to her mission of finding one that still maintains some form of its original self.
She finally finds it.
“What about that one?” The girl points upward, to a towering peak of a mountain. “That rock is still different. Why didn’t the water change that one?”
The father follows her gaze upward. “Oh, it has. That mountain was formed when a glacier – a really, really big chunk of frozen water – pushed its way through here, shaping and carving it.”
“Why didn’t it become like these rocks?”
“Because some things, like that mountain, are made of just the right things. Inside, they have the kinds of things that are stronger than the ice and the water.”
“And then they get to stay special?”
“Precisely.”
The girl stares up at the mountain, squinting as the sun sends a handful of beams peeping just over the top ridge. She wanders down the shoreline, getting a different vantage point, taking in all the unique crevices and angles and ruts in the mountain. The way the slopes change and vary. The different cliff faces. The way it looks like the pyramid she once saw in a book, only not as perfect. But in ways, more perfect.
“I like that mountain,” the girl declares.
“I like it, too.” The man smiles.
The girl returns her focus to the stones on the shoreline, picking up handfuls and letting them sift through her fingers, each landing with a thud when it hits the ground. She repeats this several times, eventually brushing her hands on her shorts, ridding them of the filmy dust.
“In more time, will that mountain become like these rocks?”
The man carefully considers how to answer the question. “Perhaps. We are seeing something at one point in time. But the world is constantly changing. Imperceptibly to us. But over millions of years, mountains will grow and shrink, oceans will change, lands will shift. So eventually, it might become like these rocks.”
The girl picks up one particular stone. She turns it over in her hands, noting its extraordinary ordinariness. “When the mountain turns into rocks, will it remember it was once a mountain?”
The man smiles again. “I would hope so.”
The girl brings that particular rock close to her eye, as though she is trying to spy inside. Then she cocoons it with both hands and pulls it close to her lips. She proceeds to whisper into her hands.
The man watches with great curiosity.
The girl drops the rock. Then picks up another. She whispers to it. Then another. And then another.
“What are you doing?” the man finally inquires.
The girl picks up another rock. She holds it outward toward her father, allowing it to sit royally on her palm. Then she pulls it in tight, cradling it next to her heart. She lowers her voice, just slightly above a secret, and says, “I don’t want them to forget.”
Mountains Within Stones
A Short Story by Tom Witkowski
9 Circles Fiction
Photo Credits: Caroline Hernandez (girl) & Brian Patrick Tagalog (stones)
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