The Goddess of Compassion, Holding Open the Door

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.
—John Muir

Rivers collect rocks.
I don’t know why.

Some rocks were lava.
It’s difficult to think about what that means. Deep time won’t always fit in the brain.

But it’s a simple question: What is a rock? 

I don’t know.

For something so basic—the most basic thing on the planet—rocks are illegible to me. I don’t know what’s inside a rock or how it came to be. What makes one smooth and another sharp, how one ends up in a river instead of somewhere else, why some feel worth keeping and others don’t.

Still, I pick them up. I always have. So do a lot of fly anglers I know. 

Cool rocks. We end up carrying them around like they mean something. Small piles of them outside in the yard. A few displayed like altar pieces on a mantel or shelf. Sprinkled around the house like they knew where to go when they got here.

There are no bad rocks. Some rocks are just cooler than others. You picked it up without knowing what it was, where it came from, how it got there. You liked the way it looked. The way it fit in your hand. That was enough. Still, there’s a moment where you have to say it out loud—“Hey, look at this cool rock.”
It always sounds a little absurd. You get used to it. 

As a fly angler, picking up cool rocks and cloud spotting are part of the gig. They are leisure activities inside a leisure activity.

Bring a rock home and show it to your partner.
“You brought home more rocks?”
“Yep. Just one this time. Isn’t it cool?”
“It’s a rock.”
“Yeah. But look at the colors when I get it wet.”
“You have a lot of rocks already.”
“It’s a river rock! This one’s from the Madison. In Montana!”
“It looks just like a regular rock.”
“Do you want to hold it?”
“I’m good.”
“Look at it next to the jade plant. It works!”

Certain features always appeal to me. A perfect oval. A smooth arc. Two colors split cleanly across the surface. A rock that fits in your hand without thinking about it. Gray or black. Simple shapes and colors. A few with unusual greens or reds, or with quartz running through.

And petrified wood.

Heavy enough not to move. Flat enough not to wobble. Smooth black with a white stripe almost perfectly in the center. It has been holding open the screen door at my house for twenty-five years. It’s a rock with a job. It’s also probably older than anything else I own by a margin that doesn’t make sense.

I’ve had some cool rocks for thirty years. I can still place most of them. The Hoh. The Clark Fork. The Yakima. The Firehole. The Deschutes. The Skagit. Rock Creek. Kelly Creek. The Snoqualmie. The Boise. The Green. The Snake. The Yellowstone. The Bighorn. The San Juan. Small chunks of the continent, displaced and gathered across seven rooms, two gardens, and a deck—like the last place the river dropped them.

We’re only borrowing them.

A rock from Rock Creek. Now in West Seattle. Next to a jade plant.
A perfect yin and yang. In the flower garden, next to a statue of Guanyin, the Buddhist goddess of compassion. That one didn’t need arranging.

In the bathroom, five smooth, flat, black rocks in a small dish. Each one has a white line arcing through it. Set together, the lines meet and make a circle.
I didn’t plan that.

I’ve discovered cool rocks in packs I haven’t used for years. It’s a surprise to see them again. It’s easy to forgive a cool rock for being a stowaway and I feel relieved that I was able to get it some fresh air.

The passing thought that since they’ve been around longer than anything else, a rock might know things—might carry something.
That, also, sounds ridiculous.

I know they don’t have memories of the river I plucked them from and I don’t care what they’re made of, honestly.
I don’t know why I kept them.
I’ve just kept them. 

Once I take a rock, it stays taken. I don’t return it. I’ve never put one back.

You don’t put rocks back because you can’t. Anywhere you leave it would be the wrong place. They can’t go home again. 

Whatever made that rock what it is—water, time, pressure, everything that moved it into that exact riverbed—you don’t have access to any of that. You can’t reverse it. You can’t even picture it. 

So it stays.

On a shelf. In a dish. Next to the Goddess of Compassion. Holding open a door.

Not where it belongs. Just where it is.