Better Than A Dozen Roses

We’d hiked up the foothill slope, between the gap in the rock rim, and down the back sway into the grassy bottom of the small valley that hugged the mountainside. It was evening. It was summer. It was the two of us and our dog, lost for a moment in nature, in time. We sat for a while, there in that quiet place, our backs leaned against a boulder, watching the mountain until the sun could no longer hold itself up.  

We followed our rambling footsteps, then, back the way we’d come. We were quartering across the grassy knob when I saw it, there at my feet. A stone, slightly rectangular in shape, jagged, and covered in a colorful bloom of fungi - ochre, pale aqua, cream, rust. It looked like the other stones scattered about that had, by freezing and thawing over an expanse of time, pushed through the surface of the open grassland - except for one thing: this one had been hewn by the elements’ invisible hands. In its center was a jagged hole large enough for a plant to grow in. 

It caught my eye, my breath, my step. I knelt to look more closely, and my wild heart was immediately captured by this wild thing. I touched its colorful surface, traced its rough edges, marveled at the trough carved in its heart. In a moment, visions of delicate flowers blooming from this ancient vessel sketched themselves across my mind and I said, Ohhh, I might have to come back for this one. 

He was standing beside me then, admiring, too. He squatted down, elbows across knees, and said simply, I think we should take it now. 

And a million little hearts erupted from my chest. 

The man lifted the twenty pound stone, balanced it against his hip, and carried it all the way back.

For me. 

As we crossed the last of the grassy flat toward the gravel road, we watched as the evening sun tried valiantly to out-sprint the shadow of the mountain behind us. I looked over at him and the stone he was carrying, both caught in a last gasp of light, and said, This is better than a dozen roses. 

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A few days later, I planted a Sutera cordata in the heart of my craggy stone, something that looked like it might have been growing out of it all on its own. 

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