A brook in August. Eleven o’clock sun bathes the woods and our tired bodies in washed out rays. The grit of salt and sand layered on our tanned, bug-bitten skin from days on the bike and nights in the woods sheds away into cascading waters.
Rhythms of time echo across the rocks in this little valley that’s been carved by the brook. A constant drumming of a symphony of which we are only a lucky audience. Slight asides are uncommon, but they do come eventually, and one must sit for a while (at least) to hear them.
Time is always old where waters flow. The smoother the rocks, the more has passed over them. Time mainly, but water too. Water pulling Earth with it. Earth and stone.
If one wants to feel the Earth, hold a rock. Or stand on one. There are stories that rocks tell if you put your ear close and listen. And then there are the ones they will never tell—the guarded memories deep within them that by the grace of the universe will hold fast.
When I am among rocks, and especially where water flows over them, I feel as if I am a child sitting cross legged on the floor listening to a story being told to me. And here today in this brook in Vermont it is no different.
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The water is cold when we slide down the rocks and step into it. Count to three, hold your breath and go under. It’s piercing absoluteness purifies.
Someone has built a swimming hole here (or for us a bathtub) by piling some of the stones together to create a little damn. Behind it, the water is maybe three feet deep. Deep enough to bathe. So we do.
It’s been a long morning. Rain the night before has left us perpetually saturated. We rode hard yesterday. Or she did anyway. I cracked open pretty early at the top of Lincoln Gap. And from there it was over for me. At one point a 23% grade—it’s coined “the steepest paved mile in America.”
I know why now.
But this morning in this water, yesterday and every hard day before it, really, seem to dissolve away. Carried downstream and out to the oceans. The dirt falls clean.
We give our bodies the love they need: eco friendly, natural soaps lathered on gently and then rinsed in the brook. We baptize ourselves anew. Anointed with goats milk and tea tree oil, we are blank canvases to be painted upon by the glittering, fine sand that was once hardened granite and now lies waiting, silent and still, across the roads we’ve yet to ride.
Sufficiently cleansed, we sun ourselves for a while and listen to what the water has to say. And then we leave it as we found it, retrace our steps back up the bank, climb in the car and depart.
And the brook and the sunlight will soon forget we were there at all.