Rocks & Rills

Near the bus stop on North Temple where I spend many hours a week waiting for the bus (sorry about all the bus-related posts lately) there's a little hill that runs parallel to the road. Beyond that hill is a big open grassy area where another government office will probably one day go. On top of the hill are four or five trees.

About a week ago, something else appeared on that hill. At first I didn't pay much attention to it, but as I passed it every day I started wondering more and more about it, until, finally, I was truly fascinated by it.

It's a rock. It's in the middle of that picture to the rock. There's nothing really special about the rock itself, but its location has me baffled.

It's too big to have been kicked up there by cars driving down the road. It's too small to have been placed there as part of a landscaping effort. It's too big for a bird to have carried it. There are no other rocks anywhere near there; probably not for 200 yards in any direction. The only conclusion I can come up with is that somebody put it there. But the question is: why?

There are a lot of transients (I prefer the word "Hobo", so I'll be using it instead of the PC term) in the area, including many who sleep on the other side of the little hill (in that yellow patch on the right of the photo to the left). As a result, a lot of beer and whiskey bottles litter the ground.

But you can't drink out of a rock. And as far as I can tell, there's no reason to bring a rock to that area. It's too big to just pick up and carry the hundreds of yards it had to have travelled. So why is it there? What purpose does it serve? did a hobo use it as a pillow? Was it involved in a gang fight (of a really lame rocks and sticks type gang)? If there were more rocks on top I'd assume somebody had left it there to mark a trail.

If you're still reading this entry hoping to find out the answer, I hate to disappoint you, but I don't have any idea.

However, it has made me think a little bit. How much history is there in the world around us that we aren't able to see or understand? There's probably a pretty good story about how that rock came to be there (or a really lame story) but we'll never know it. How many other things in the world around us are indicators of what has passed, and we don't recognize it?

When you think that for thousands of years people have been walking around on the ground that we now live on--hunting, sleeping, throwing sticks (I don't know what they did back then)--it makes you wonder who has been there before you, and what were they like.

It was interesting in Rome to be able to stand where Julius Caesar was assassinated. Or where Peter and Paul were imprisoned. Sure, a lot has changed in 2000 years, but it makes you wonder if maybe there's a little cosmic something left over from them in the places they've been.

Which leads to the next question: What am I leaving behind for future generations to see? Am I dropping rocks in strange places, just to confuse people waiting at the bus stop? Or am I leaving a record of my knowledge and experiences that will help further the intellectual pursuits of future generations? Am I writing my verse in the poem of the history of the world?