Carrying red roses, I walk up the mountain on ice, crossing the brook above a foot of snow.
It is a long way in until I see the roots left hanging, cut by the excavator. Great stones litter the ground, here and there dotted with a pool of water or a fallen limb. Occasionally there are boulders with edges bare to the wind. Once a source for stones and gravel, today this quarry is a sacred space of lingering memories and forgotten stories.
A tall stone marks the perimeter. It had been quarried here recently, once left behind by retreating glaciers, hidden away in the darkness, nestled against companions for thousands of years. It now stands as if hanging between worlds, connecting the earth and sky, naked to the sun and the moon, hot against the summer rain, bare to the winter wind.
For years I have come to make offerings here, washing the stone in fragrant smoke, drawing images in charcoal on its weathered faces, bathing it with water. The first summer blackberry vines began to grow up around it, and milkweed sprang up at its feet, flowering into sweet blossoms filled with bright red beetles and monarch butterflies. I bring rose hips and seeds and corn to leave at its feet. And for its crown I place incense in its chinks and crevices and leave offerings there for crows.
Today I place sprigs of sage and leaves of tobacco in a bundle on top, circling the herbs with a ring of seeds and corn. There is no breeze beneath the gray clouds, and the incense lights readily, its black smoke trailing straight away and upward. Then I release its fragrant smoke with my hand and its sweet aroma pierces the air and lingers on my tongue.
At last I add the roses to the circle, the color of the reddest garnets. Telling of timelessness, and the silence and secrets of the ages, the rose will be my guide today.
I draw out my flute and as I play a spare melody with the rising smoke, a fresh breeze rises sharply. Spare stalks of mullein and grass, young pines and vines bend with the breeze, bolstered by the snow at their feet. The air stirs the smoke and scatters the red velvet petals, sending them reeling across the ice and snow. They skip and skitter, tumbling free, brushing the face of stones or whisking past, falling well away and out of my sight.
And as I finish my prayer, the wind falls straight away and the air becomes still around me once again.
A thread of sun breaks from a single cloud, and the dark bluff behind me warms and begins to slough in the cold light, sending small steps slipping downward like the footfalls of a ghost.
I lay down my flute and follow the farthest steps of petals across the snow.
I find them resting among arcs of stones, in bare sunlight and in the shadows. As I walk I take out my knife to break through the ice and snow beneath a petal at its farthest reach. And there nestled among the leavings of an another age, among a menagerie of stones, the lost pages of forgotten stories, one is clearly different. The stone glistens with the iridescent sheen of mica and all across its surface are scattered spots as dull as coal.
Then as the sunlight touches it again I pour water over its face, and the snow washes quickly away.
Kissed by sunlight, water brings out its depth and I see it is a matrix filled with jewels, raw garnets of deep burgundy, like rose petals turned to stone, gleaming with their original wild light.
I lift it into the day to take its part in an old story. To whisper its secrets of silence in another garden. To bring the mountain peak to the brook, and its light into the darkness.
To speak across time, telling of roses becoming stones and of stones becoming roses.
