There’s a trail near my house.  I’ve known of its exis­tence since we moved in near­ly a decade ago—its entrance is marked by a charm­ing­ly rus­tic carved wood­en sign—but it was only under the scent-moti­vat­ed encour­age­ment of Jack­ie (the retriev­er mix also known as my par­ents’ favorite child) that I first walked along it, sev­er­al weeks ago.  And with Jack­ie on the end of the leash and the autumn sun quick­ly set­ting, that first walk was a quick one.  So it’s only been recent­ly that I’ve tak­en time to walk the trail more slow­ly, for my own pur­pos­es.  And so too, it was only today that I took the time to parse an image that had struck me only as a casu­al curios­i­ty on ear­li­er trips.

Rough­ly halfway around the mile-long loop that is the trail, a tree has fall­en over into the Yel­low Breech­es Creek, its clutch­ing roots exposed to the air for what must be years now.  And in those roots, like huge unpol­ished jew­els in a wood­work­er’s set­ting, sit sev­er­al fist-sized chunks of shale.

The first time I noticed them I smiled, pic­tur­ing boy­hood sum­mers in sim­i­lar­ly wood­ed set­tings, when friends and I built cities out of rocks and sticks.  Wedg­ing these shale chunks into the tree roots would have made per­fect hide-outs for our action fig­ures as they pre­pared to ambush their foes.

But today as I approached the shaly roots, I stopped.  And as the crunch-crunch of my feet in the dry leaves yield­ed to the airy silence of the woods, I looked more close­ly.  Images of chil­dren with toys and bored teenagers fad­ed away as I real­ized the truth: this was a nat­ur­al occur­rence.  The tree roots had grown around the rocks.  These stones weren’t placed there after the tree fell; instead, the roots must have bro­ken through a lay­er of shale as they grew down­ward into the creek bank.  The insis­tent force of their growth was enough to shat­ter the rock, but not enough to com­plete­ly dis­place it.  Over the course of years the stone and the wood yield­ed to one anoth­er in turns, cre­at­ing this acci­den­tal col­lage of wood and stone that now, once the tree had reached the end of its lifes­pan and fall­en, reached upward toward the sun, wait­ing to be noticed and appre­ci­at­ed by passers-by.

So I stood for a while, in appre­ci­a­tion and grat­i­tude.  And then I con­tin­ued on my way.