What do you know about that?

 

There is a bend in the river. On the far side, a trail runs through the trees alongside the river – it winds from Burcham Park to the bridge. On the near side, I have clambered down the limestone boulders of the levee several times now and I have built cairns at this bend in the river. That the rocks will come tumbling down – sooner or later - is no matter.

Now I particularly know this particular place along the bend because there is one large limestone boulder that looks las of it has a human-made scar on its face. It’s as if a giant drill bit pierced the limestone layer of rock so that it could be blown up into boulders with dynamite for the levee.   It could all have happened that way. I don’t know.

Nevertheless, this place is unmistakable to me when I stand there near the bend in the river. It’s like this: that one particular stone rests where it rests along that bend in the river, one stone among the many in the levee, waiting or not waiting across the water from where a footbridge along the trail crosses a small creek that empties into the far side of the Kaw River.

I could take you to that bend in the river if you wanted to see it. Or for now, I could show you some pictures instead.

These few photos are from the time that I built a particular cairn at that particular bend in the Kaw River.

Now I feel as if I must remind you that a cairn is just a small tower of rock - balancing. This one cairn had no great significance for me – except that I chose and I balanced the stones. The stones wouldn’t have done that all by themselves. Not just that particular way that I did it. And so I simply enjoy building small cairns along the river now and then. Not for forever. I just build a cairn now and then. Signifying a place. Signifying myself, perhaps. 

For now. Not for forever.

But a limestone boulder is a real thing. Like a cairn. Like a river. Like me.

Some scattering is to be expected over time.

And then that morning a heron happened along. That particular heron was as real as it could get on that particular morning several weeks ago. You can hardly see it in the photos I took – I had just turned back to look one more  time and I saw a great blue heron flying near the bend in the river, flying out over the water where the river bends, flying just past where I had built my cairn. I clicked my camera, hoping to capture something.

And what do you know about that?

I was there. I saw what I saw. I even have the photographs. And I still find it hard to believe that the sky could be so blue, that the water could have been so still, that the reflections of the trees on the far bank could appear so clearly on the surface of the river, that a heron could fly by just as I was looking back at the cairn I had built.

So I build cairns because I can.

What do you know about that?