Shining Rock

 

December 3, 2021

Walked in Shining Rock and Graveyard Fields in the purest blue air that has ever been. Gille na gille, brightness most bright. I considered that I likely have not walked there in this century. I was purely alone heading our early, though I ran into outgoing hikers as I headed back to the car. Two very old men in camo had gotten there, amazingly, in a truck. I don’t think they were hunting. What would you hunt there on the roof of the world? When I approached they were packing camp chairs and putting them back into the truck. I think they may have just been sitting there facing the Majesty. Stopped and turned around at a patch of ice that went on farther than I could see. Slipping and falling was not on the morning’s agenda. Ate ice broken from stone, cold, stony, refreshing beyond words.  Lauridsen’s “Sure on This Shining Night” was my earworm for the journey. That was well. Every ten feet or so, streams have cut deeply into the roadside. The slope to the north doesn’t look high enough to generate all that runoff. Juncos were with me, and down in the gorge I heard ravens calling their unmistakable call. One of the lines from the Agee text is “all is healed, all is health.” That is how I felt.