Bouler Dash
The rock had been part of the embankment along the side of the road long before there was a road. Indeed, the rock could remember a time when there was no hillside at all. In the past, the forest filled the whole valley, and the rock remembered hunters chasing the wild pigs and the deer. Once, long, long ago, a huge hairy creature was chased down by enormous wolves. Large brown bears would rub themselves on the trees, and their cubs loved to roll down the hill or bathe in the stream below. Now, the farmers had taken over, and the rock looked out across a narrow valley with many oak trees lining the sides and cultivated land along the valley floor. It had been a long time since the rock last saw a wolf or a bear.
From its vantage point, it would watch the eagles and buzzards circling on the thermals above. Wasps and lonely bees would build nests in its cracks. The wind would scour its face, the rain would wash away the dust of the day, and the sun would bring heat in the summer and even relief in the dark days of winter.
Deep below the rock’s surface, water had formed caverns, with thousands of stalagmites and stalactites marking like a calendar the hundreds of thousands of years they took to form. But the rock thought to itself they were beginners compared to it. The rock was born five hundred million years ago. It even had a distant, vague memory of its beginning on the floor of a vast ocean, but it was so long ago that when the rock tried to recall any details, it was like looking into a mist where nothing was clear and everything was just out of reach.
It had been part of this hillside for at least twenty million years, but it wasn’t absolutely certain as it didn’t have any way of measuring time accurately. It marked the days by the passing of the sun and the phases of the moon. It knew the seasons that came and went, but it had lost count of how many seasons had come and gone. Not that it mattered to the rock. It had many qualities besides its fortitude, its stoicism, and its strength, but its greatest gift was its patience. It sat on the side of the hill waiting and waiting, never complaining, but it watched and waited for it knew one day its destiny would come. Most rocks never had the honour of a destiny day, and it was unsure how it knew that it would happen, but the rock had a feeling deep in its strata that the time would one day come.
The wind that sang in the trees would talk to the rock about great wonders it had seen and faraway places it had been. The rock told the wind it would love to wander the world, but it did love its valley, and although it had been looking out on the same valley for 20 million years, it was an ever-changing place. One day, after the snow had gone, wild orchids had filled the fields, and the hillside wore a cloak of bluebells. The wind whispered to the rock that the storm had spoken to it, and it should prepare because its destiny would arrive soon.
The rock was as excited as Precambrian limestone could be, which, to be honest, was not very much at all. But it asked the wind what would happen. The wind told how a mighty storm was arriving soon, and it would flood the valley, and the trees would walk, and the hillside would move.
The sun rose that morning like it did every morning, and besides a mist shrouding the valley floor, there was no hint of what the day would bring. Soon, dark clouds began to gather, and a chill breeze caused the trees to tremble. The rain, which was slight at first, was growing more intense. The stream in the valley below was turning into a river of blood-red mud mixed with broken branches. The sky had darkened, and the wind began to howl, reminding the rock of the long-lost wolves.
On the other side of the steep valley terraces, there was a flash of light that smacked one of the trees so hard it leapt into the air and then, staggering like a drunk, fell down the valley side. The rock could see that the soil had also been ripped away, and now the rain was washing it down to the river as well. It could see a gash of white limestone cutting across the hillside like a crooked smile. Then it happened. Another crack of lightning and part of the hillside collapsed, sending boulders crashing down. The rock had never seen anything more beautiful in its life. Boulders of all shapes and sizes spilled out. First a trickle and then a river of stone ran towards the valley floor and threw itself into the raging water. “Boulders, beautiful boulders.” It was all the rock could think of as it did not have the beginning of a vocabulary to describe the beauty of what it was witnessing.
As the rock watched and let the moment sink in, it was suddenly snapped out of its torpor because somewhere deep within the rock’s strata, a great crack appeared, followed by a very loud bang. The rock had felt tremors before and even small earthquakes, but nothing like this. The explosion shook the earth that sat on top of the rock, and a few of the nearest trees cowered in fear. The wind heard the noise and whispered to the rock, telling it that all would be well and it was natural and normal. It told the rock that more cracks would come, and at first there would be moments in between when there were no more cracks, but as time ticked on, the cracks would increase and the gaps would be closer together.
The wind said, “You will know when your time of destiny arrives.”
For an hour, there was no let-up in the storm, and the whole of the valley floor was now a raging torrent of water, and the trees bent and shook. The road had become a river as water poured down the hillside from the plateau above. Branches were torn from trees, and they would eventually join the river on its journey of discovery. All this, the rock watched in awe-struck wonder as the cracks in its strata ruptured and split. The rock bore the pain with dogged determination. Again and again, the lightning filled the darkness, smashing into the rock and finding its way into the crevices and fissures. Finally, the rock ruptured with an enormous explosion as the rock face heaved itself up and then burst forward in a shower of boulders and rubble, crashing down onto the road below.
The road itself was now a torrent of flowing water, and the rock joined the water and tumbled and spun in the road river as it swept its precious cargo of newly born boulders forward. The road suddenly made a left turn, but the water and the rock had other ideas and spilled over the valley sides and plunged down and down towards the river below.
Sadly, not all the rocks made it to the river. Some became stuck behind fallen trees or were lodged behind other stones, but most made it into the river, and every boulder, every stone, and every tiny piece of gravel was filled with delight as the water embraced the rock and welcomed it into the world and its new life. The rock felt the glory of the moment like no other. It was moving, it was travelling, a great adventure had begun.
Along the valley floor it travelled until suddenly it joined another river, and now beside it were more rocks, more boulders. The rock could see the villages and the towns passing by. Bridges that had stood for centuries straddling the river were swept away in the flood. Rocks with smooth sides and sharp corners joined in the chaos and the merriment.
If the rock had a voice, it would cry out with happiness, but instead, it contented itself with being in the moment. Now it could see boats and much larger bridges towering over the ever-widening river, and then suddenly the rock could feel a change in the water. It was colder, and the mud colour of the river seemed to be merging with something far older. The memories that were lost in the mist began to clear, images of giant sea creatures, a snail-like creature but so much bigger than anything it had seen before darted for a moment out of the mist and then vanished. The beginning, it thought, “the time before, was this my destiny?” Now there were no riverbanks, giant waves tore the sky above apart. The rock noticed something else. It was getting smaller. In the turbulence of the water, tiny pieces were drifted off its sides and settled on the floor of the ocean. The rock became giddy in the maelstrom of movement, its thoughts became quiet until they too were no more, and then there was nothing of it left just infinitely small fragments that sank to the bottom of the sea. Soon, more fragments joined the others, and the weight of the water pressed it down. The beginning began again as it had done many times before, not always on this planet. Sometimes it travelled across distant galaxies, crashing into other planets or being swallowed by holes in the walls of time and space, and so the infinite cycle of life continues and is everything's destiny.
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