“Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”
Proverbs 22:6 KJV
Midway upon the journey of our... car ride home, I couldn’t help but let my mind wander. I watched the green of the forest blur the white hills as we followed the great grey serpent that slithered between them. The silhouettes of Merciless Indian Savages painted the shadows that only the light of memory could fill.
I wonder a lot about those hills. I look at the height and diameter of a lot of those trees and think, ‘Wow these creatures must have quite a bit of memories to share.’ If you were to core any of these trees, they would tell you when they most thrived, as well as the tremendous trials they endured. Some of the small ones are the same age as some of the big ones. Some might throw surviving a fire or two in the mix, and some might not have been so lucky.
Many an Indian had to have passed under the canopy of these trees. Did any of these pines know my grandpa? Or his grandpa? What other kind of Indians passed through here? Has the great Kamiakin of the Yakama been through here? Do the trees know me?
Hell, I’m not even sure I know me. Would they recognize me without the braids I’m supposed to wear? Would they understand my words without my mother’s tongue?
Too many questions with too many answers I’m not sure I even want to know. I do know, however, that the hills don’t say much thus making them good company. Well not in the form of words anyways.
~
I remember standing on the banks of the Klikitat skipping the flattest rocks I could find across its surface. I would try to hear. At first, I thought I was foolish trying to talk to nature like I was Disney’s Pocahontas or something.
I stood in a shallow pool and watched the soot from my boots drift away along with any trace that I was ever there. The water slapped the rocks and riverbed as it moved swiftly, never to be touched again by the Vibram sole of my Danners. S k i p. S k i p. Skip. Skip. Skipskipskip.
“My mom used to bring us here all the time,” my coworker said.
A little startled by the break in the silence, I went for his conversational bait, “Really? Why is that?”
“We used to stay nearby in the lookout over the summer. We practically lived here,” he said. We both slowly graduated to hitting rocks across the river with warped branches.
“Did you like it?”
“Oh yeah I loved it. Being out here makes it harder to be indoors when we’re in the valley. And it kept us out of trouble,” he said. We both laughed for a second and listened to the peace again for a bit.
“We used to look at the goat rocks to try to find mountain goats right around the corner here,” he said.
“Let’s take a look at ‘em then,” I replied. We found our way back to our trusty war pony and found a campground across the draw and tried to spot goats with a pair of binoculars we kept in the truck.
In all of its glory, we found a Billy standing proudly elevated on a rock. We took turns looking through the binoculars before we packed up and got ready to make our drive back down the windy roads. Those proud goats would inspire a lot of majestic selfies later on.
My mind wandered back to the water. The goats. The conversation I shared with my brother. And everything in between them. I know we were both there at the same time and in the same place, but the message we each received that day was very different. I often wonder…
~
© Copyright Victor Andy Jr., 2019