Roots Above The Stones

Every year at this season we watch the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and their Christmas concert. Last night we watched it; we had recorded it the night before, and I was grateful because I was able to fast forward through much of it. The vibe of the show was very different from what we usually experience. First of all, we noticed that the word “Mormon” has been expunged from the group’s title. They’re now The Tabernacle Choir. This seems logical, given what I have read in recent months about the LDS church bending over backwards to fit in with the rainbow regiment people.

Also, the tone of the programs was…off. The host, a television actor, was way too talky. He had more monologues than Carter has little pills. There was something forced about his demeanor, as if he were trying to convince himself that he was doing something worthwhile. The music was top shelf, as usual, but there was a flatness to the performances, both vocal and orchestral, and the bell-ringers and various supporting performers seemed distracted and insincere. Very odd. As I noted above, we ended up fast-forwarding through a lot of it because it was so dull and uninspired.

Dull and uninspired. That is the very day itself, isn’t it? Look around and see if it isn’t so.

***

Both my wife and I continue to battle this crud that has settled into our bodies. Interestingly, there is almost no talk of Covid in this area anymore…everyone’s obsessed with the flu, which is making its presence known with a vengeance. I was starting to think they’d come up with a cure for the Chinavirus. Ah, well…the flu….the worst of it is over, but we are still plagued by heavy coughing and congestion. My head is so stuffy, it actually impairs my hearing. I listened to something on my laptop with the headphones the other night and I had the volume at 100%, and still couldn’t hear clearly. When the room is quiet, it sounds as if I were standing near a waterfall. That tumbling roar – you can conjure it in your mind right now –is with me continually these days. The only thing I haven’t tried is the one thing I usually try first, which is holding my face over a steaming pan of water with a draped towel sealing me into my own private sauna. Tonight will be the night.

***

The weather has been merciful lately, rainy but mild, not too arthritic nor synovial. This seems to be set to change. This weekend will be cold with highs only in the 30s. I don’t trust meteorologists to be able to forecast the weather more than 36 hours in advance (like every other profession in this age, they seem incapable of doing what they boast about being able to do), but if by some wild chance their darts hit the board correctly this time around, next weekend will be absolutely arctic for the Christmas holiday. Hurumph. We’ll see.

***

As I write this, there are two mourning doves on the ground outside my door, picking their way through the wet leaves and the winter grass, dressed for the yuletide in their prim vests and skirts, hair slicked back, sleek and velvety in the mist, hunting for whatever they sense is down there under the yard’s mast. I took a break a while ago and went up into the woods for a short stroll just to stretch my legs and clear my Mucinex-ish head. I stood silent beneath gray trees, ankle deep in leaves like wet leather, and once again I had the powerful impression that I could sense something slumbering beneath the earth. I don’t know if this is a collective presence or one entity, but it is a distinct “call” that I have sensed before. Never far from my mind is the awareness that this land was once the scene of battles between Indians and settlers, but this sense of a sleeping presence seems to be more ancient than two or three centuries back. I am reminded of an excellent book I read on the recommendation of a friend, “Vinlanders,” which makes the strong case that many if not most of the so-called “native American” artifacts, weapons, tools, burial mounds, etc. in North America were actually left here by Vikings and other Germanic peoples who traveled and lived on this continent. The book made me smile with delight while contemplating a dragon longship making its way up the Mississippi River, watched by fear-struck Indians hiding in tree-lines along the banks…

Anyway, this sense of someone or something beneath the soil is with me all the time, but most dramatically when I am standing alone on the dirt and listening for it. In those moments memory blurs and certain doors can be pushed ajar, but they can never be forced open. In those moments I am listening. My mouth drops open slightly in order to improve my hearing, even when my ears roar with pressure and congestion. I am not seeking a vision, not looking for something with my eyes, not anticipating anything but ready for it still. The sense of being watched not just by the birds and small things in the trees, but by the trees themselves, those hoary observers of all the comings and goings at their rooted feet. One of them fell a few years ago, exposing a huge root ball. I picked through it out of curiosity, idly wondering if I would find a skeleton or a spearhead or a scroll. What I found was a collection of beautiful and unusual stones. I selected several of them and brought them down to the house and washed them off. I put them on a table and gazed at them for a long time. And the thought I had then was this: no man has ever seen these stones before. But was this true? Did another of my kind, on some distant past day, pick up one of these stones, weigh it in his hand, consider its striations and hues, and then toss it over to the side, distracted by what he was doing there?

Perhaps so. Perhaps it is his presence that I feel, or one like his. I kept those stones for a few weeks, then took them back up into the shade of the trees and placed them reverently on the ground below the fallen tree’s root ball. Will another of my kind find them there on a day when I am not even a memory any longer? The thought comforts me, though I know not why.

These acres around us are quiet now. Is something trying to awaken, to fight its way out of sleep and torpor? This is the season of the evergreen, of the pipping red bird, of the crystalized flake, of the reddened cheek, of the short day and the long night. I look each morning to the east, to reassure myself of a new day’s arrival and to assess the coming hours’ weather. But in the evenings, I look to the west, not just to see the day dim and die, but because I am a man of the West. I think our day is nearly done, and I do not know what will awake when its time comes round.

~ S.K. Orr