tree bark | Scott's Place...Images and Words

Life on a Tree Stump….

There were blue and green and red and black lines on the map, the glossy finish reflecting the overhead office lights, the solid red light illuminated on the nearby phone telling me that a voice-mail message was waiting…and waiting….

…the sound of tires screeching and metal crashing into metal and the siren of a police motorcycle approaching with its loudness and then, a fan swirls the stagnant air and I can hear the beeping of digital keys unlocking the lobby door, the boss calls to a co-worker and the clock on my computer says it’s 4:55…and counting…

…rolling wheels on the plastic pad, truck keys pulled out of my bag…shut-down the fan and the computer and lock all the drawers…the work week is over as my shoes tap down the stairs…onto the carpeted hallway and out through the double glass doors…evening and morning and another one, too…chores finished…

…and the mountains are calling me…twelve miles away…eleven…ten…nine…the moments passing, the canyon is enveloping me with its rocky arms, forest and green and a rocky, rumbling stream…

…hit the alarm on the key fob, put the keys into my backpack…adjust the camera around my neck…step into the gravel…and beyond onto the rocky trail…

…mulch and pine needles and earth and the soft, sweet smell of wet and rot and decay and the greening of life in the canyons away. It’s called Days Fork in Big Cottonwood Canyon…

…there’s a mine at the end of the trail, a part of Utah’s history that’s already been made…and it’s not going anywhere soon…

…so I stop, I tarry, I look and listen, sit and stay a while…there’s so much life between here and the end of the trail…and I found this little micro-cosm…a world unto itself…teeming with life and death and rot and rebirth…