Taming the Monster in the Backyard

Staring Down The Big Empty

Getting to know your local neighborhood monsters isn’t easy. Taming them is much harder. Lulling a particularly big one back to sleep after seeing it stir, jolt awake, rise up tall on its hind legs, and hear it roar in its full fury in an unabashed display of strength and power can be dangerous work indeed. If you’re not careful, some of the biggest monsters out there might swallow you whole.

There’s no real working with “The Big Empty” without risking dire consequences, but I’ve always loved a challenge. The best means I’ve come up with over the years to familiarize myself with this specific monster is to hop off big boulders, jump off low roofs, bike skinny ledges, climb tall rocks, summit high peaks, ski big exposures, and bungee jump from bridges hundreds of feet off the deck. Sky diving could be next on the list but now it’s just getting more complicated. Ultralight minimalists like me hate that.

What could be simpler than tossing a small pebble out into space? My all time favorite way to toy with big giant open spaces looming beneath my feet is to huck small rocks off cliffs into the wide open hungry maw of The Big Empty waiting patiently below for more prey (but only after triply reassuring myself that there’s no one other than imaginary beasts down below). Watching a rock silently fall through a vast nothingness with elegance, style and grace is not only entertaining but also enlightening.

“I’m finally free!” Yeah, until you’re swallowed up in one big bite. Lucky for this rock, it looks like The Big Empty is still asleep. Next time, larger rock.

Spinning and tumbling almost playfully, the small cobble I launch off the edge is pulled through space and time until it lands in a safe resting spot far down below. Unless the rock had taken some physics classes, it may not have been aware that there had been some very predictable and plottable waypoints in its forward movement. Could it have double backed and returned to the launch pad? Most definitely not. Could it have found a radically different path forward starting somewhere mid-flight? Hmmm…maybe only after graduating from Jedi school.

As I sit here now on the edge of one of my favorite cliffs with nothing underfoot and with a larger rock in hand, is falling thousands of feet into the abyss really what this cobble has on its to-do list for today? What might it think of all this hubbub? Could it simply be too much excitement to handle all at once after sitting idly for millions of years resting in that same old spot over there underneath that manzanita bush cohabitating with its entire nuclear family and some other close geologic friends?

Or will it heave a giant sigh of relief to finally be free, after all these years, from following all of the conventions and expectations of a typical rock? Must it forever follow the predictable path of a cobble sitting out and rolling around a small patch on a big open granite bench? If I listen closely enough, would I be able to hear tiny scritches and stratches emanating from its small fissures and cracks? “Unshackled at last! Scrap everything! Cancel all my appointments! Something big is going to happen today. I can feel it!”

Before releasing it into the wild, I flip over the pebble in my palm, spin it around and lightly toss it up and down to try to more fully understand its character, all the while studying its size, shape, color, and heft. Do stones get nervous? It surely must be unsettling for it to see billions of distant relatives scattered haphazardly up, down and across the canyon floor far down below. Is it only just now anxiously realizing that it will soon be joining them? And only after a long solo journey sailing untethered across a vast expanse of emptiness? Wasn’t this its eventual fate anyway? And what about that big scary monster!?! How come no one’s talking about that! (sound of a rock swallowing hard)

Maybe if it somehow knew that there was an actual trajectory, even without fully understanding the laws of physics, then it wouldn’t seem so scary. After all, the charted flight path is just out of reach, barely, from the clutches of The Big Empty. Relax, rock! I know this might be hard to believe but this whole experience will be both exciting and frightening in equal measures. But then I realize with a heavy sigh that it couldn’t possibly know all of these things sitting sheltered underneath a manzanita bush for millions of years without textbooks, the internet, or even just a nearby aging boulder as a solid coach and mentor. Most of what it’s heard and learned over the years has been from a bunch of scree and shale.

Before I see my friend off, first things first. It’s only right to have some compassion for the little pebble family sitting back behind me before rolling one of their stones out of the rock group. What had Mama and Papa Pebble always told the little ones about the scary monster lurking in their own backyard? “There are dangerous things out there. Don’t go wandering out alone. Remember to always tell us where you’re going and when you’ll be back! Don’t forget to give us a holler as soon as you round the bush! Check in with us often!”

Yes, I could understand what kind of feelings must’ve been coming up, knowing that Mama and Papa Pebble had filled every moment of every day in the lives of their small gravel so that they would never ever get bored or have even the slightest amount of spare time to stop, think and dwell on The Big Empty.

But here we sit, pebble and me, on the very edge of nothing. We’re about to better see, understand, and I dare say even cherish The Big Empty for what it actually is and not what many have made it out to be. After a long and frightening flight, is it possible that just maybe this rock will find some unexpected and unforeseen wondrous things in its new home way out across the canyon that will fill its new life with love, joy, happiness, and the excitement of discovery? Once the rock lands in its new digs, could it find that it’s never felt more alive with all these strange and unfamiliar things going on all around it unscripted, unplanned, and unrehearsed?

“Look at all of these new and interesting boulders, cobbles, and stones! They certainly don’t look like me. Or behave like me. Look at how they rumble and tumble!” In just a short while, new patterns may start to emerge that the cobble could not have previously imagined or understood from its home way high up on that tiny little ledge sitting far above the canyon floor. Just perhaps, this is exactly what it needed - a long journey away from all the things it thought it knew so well. To be set down in a strange and foreign new world that would challenge so many of the norms and beliefs that it had thought were as solidly fundamental as the bedrock beneath it.

Almost ready to throw the rock, I stop and ask myself if I could predict where it might land using some of my hard earned physics knowledge. No, not really. Not without a lot of figuring, and that would take too much work. We’d need an engineer for that. But then I consider myself silly when I realize that throwing this rock off the edge without knowing exactly where it’ll land is precisely the fun of it. It will surely fall, yes, but where will it land? No matter the exact coordinates, I’m confident that it’ll find a new and exciting community that’s beyond anything it’s known its entire existence. Try as we may to predict and anticipate what its new life will be like, we just can’t.

So at long last, I casually huck the rock off the edge and watch it spin, tumble and fall out into space. But wait! Did I just catch a glimpse of gleeful abandon? Too late! I’ve lost it. I can’t see it anymore. I can’t even tell where it’s landed. All I know is that it’s now thousands of feet down below me. All I can hope for is that it’s arrived in a great new spot, is meeting some incredible cobbles, and its new friends will soon be showing it around the neighborhood. Oh yeah, and phew! It wasn’t swiped up by the clutches of The Big Empty and gobbled up in a one ghastly gulp.

With a relaxed sigh of relief and wonder, I carefully creep away from the precipice, get to my feet, stretch my legs, pick up my rucksack, and bid farewell to the pebble family sitting beneath the bush. No, sorry, they probably won’t get any postcards from their wayward rock. They can blame me for that if they’d like. I simply suggest that maybe they should instinctively know that after spending millions of years together, their little pebble would have gained all the necessary skills that it’d need to successfully navigate the world and make it through life on its very own. After all, Mama and Papa Pebble, it’s only a rock!

I stride back down the gently sloping bench to the trail that crosses the mountain meadow up ahead. Past the tarn, I’ll be coming up to the junction. Hanging a right, I know that I’d be retracing my steps back along the creek, over the carefully placed mid-stream stones, down along the rocky sidehill, and finally to the big terminal lake where I’d kick off my boots and jump in for a quick dip before loading up the car and heading back to the comforts of my familiar home.

But as I take a snack break at the fork in the trail, I wonder where a left turn would take me. I can see from here that the trail crests that knoll up over there but I can’t see where it heads beyond that. Does it end or keep going? I instinctively reach for my pocket….Ahh, shoot…I forgot my map. It’s safely stowed away back at the car. And that’s all down to the right of the fork.

What to do? Seeing that I know very little about the country up to the left, don’t know this afternoon’s forecast, have no idea what lies out beyond those peaks over there, and don’t have a clue as to how much steam I have left in my legs, the right choice becomes crystal clear.

I take a left.