We once visited a famous, ancient garden in Kyoto, Japan. It only consists of a small courtyard with fifteen rocks, set on little patches of moss, surrounded by carefully raked gravel. Every day, hundreds of visitors come just to sit, in quiet contemplation, looking at the rocks. Some, like me, try to work out the trick that prevents the viewers from seeing all the rocks at once, regardless of where they stand (or sit).
Today, we’re in a place that is about as far from Zen tranquillity as you could get, but, for some reason that garden comes back to mind.
We’re off to our annual Aussie family beach vacation at a little place called Southwest Rocks. Everything’s been so crazy at home over the past couple of weeks that Nanette and I decided to overnight at an apartment at Sapphire Beach as a sort of “salt air detox” before we hit the vacation spot.
Here’s some little vignettes of the past seven hours or so.
- All packed and in the car. “Did you turn the water off?” “Yes dear.”
- Wow, the highway to Brisbane is really busy today – “Watch out, that huge truck just crossed into our lane!” “Yes dear, I noticed that.”
- Oh, the road from Brisbane through the Gold Coast is even crazier. Cars packed to the eyeballs with tents and kids and luggage and kayaks and … (by the way, do cars really have eyeballs?). Everyone is madly rushing to get somewhere before “the real traffic starts.”
- “Do you know where the place is?” “No dear, I thought you had the address.”
- Here we are. – Finally, everything safely unpacked.
- Let’s walk down to the beach – Ahhh, feel the serenity!
Yep, when you take that first step onto the coarse sand, feel that first wave crash across your feet, and smell the salt spray blowing off the wild breakers, everything else just fades away.
It’s too dangerous to swim at this beach, so we’re alone except for a few seagulls and an osprey that drifts lazily by on the breeze, following its endless search for fish. And, just when I thought things couldn’t get any better, we come across a spot where some vagary of wind or tide has deposited a pile of beautifully smoothed stones. And why is this so important? Well, I have a collection of these little stones picked up at random places throughout our travels. I’m too lazy to mark where they came from – maybe Mexico on the day the national team was eliminated from the World Cup, maybe the Sunshine Coast after we got stuck on that flooded highway with Peter and Alex, maybe nowhere in particular.
Part of the fascination is that they were all originally parts of much bigger rocks, probably close by where I found them, that have been pounded and rolled by the surf for hundreds or maybe even thousands of years. Now, they’re just little stones in my pocket.
… It’s now evening. I’m sitting on the balcony of the apartment watching the waves crash over a rocky outcrop a little way out from the shore. It’s so relaxing to just sit, lulled by the never-ending sound of the surf. There’s a stone in my pocket. I know where it came from, but tomorrow, I’ll probably forget.
LamondG 