And the rocks and weeds eat each other
I picked rocks from a bunch of Western New York fields when I was a kid. My step-father would drop me and my brother off at some hedgerow and tell us to walk the perimeter of the field and pick up as much as we could.
We’d have to throw the rocks into the tree line or into a tractor bucket, breathing the dust as it split with the crevices of the basalt and granite and diorite brought to the surface with the most recent bottom plowing.
The rocks arrived long before we were thought off, catching a ride on the gray belly of a two mile thick glacier. In the deposits that followed came everything from the boulders – now sitting in front yards painted with house numbers or enveloped by lichens – to the baby minerals of feldspar and hornblend and all those magnificent magnetic bits of iron.
Picking up rocks is as fun now as it was when I was eight years old, which is to say that it is no fun at all. It reminds me of work for no pay. It reminds me of long summer days away from friends. It reminds me of responsibility that I had no need or want of. It reminds me of time ill-spent laboring for someone I could care less about.
But that all changes with the crop mob…
Sometimes I know that rocks need to be picked and weeds need to be pulled. These tasks are best accomplished with more than one person, in a mass of asses and elbows, jabbering on and on about everything other than rocks and weeds and tasks that really have no end.
Weeds decay into their components of minerals and carbon and nitrogen within days. A person could watch the whole process if they had the patience and justification.
Rocks decay much more slowly and, without the aid of the outside crush of a human or machine doing some work, they will not likely decay within a person’s lifetime. You can watch if you want, but you might want to bring something to eat while you wait.
So picked and piled rocks will remain picked and piled rocks wherever we place them at least until some other monkey comes along and moves them again. Maybe they will be hidden under weeds as the years pass only to be rediscovered by a passing lawnmower or an unprotected toe.
Only when I was a teenager did I realize that there existed mechanical rock pickers that pulled behind tractors and did the work we did in seconds rather than hours. This made me realize that dropping off kids at the edge of a field was just a convenient way to get rid of those kids for the day. Tasks without end make good kid-sitters.
July 22, 2009 at 7:31 pm
Ahhh, the many ways parents have of getting respite from their spawn. At least you lived in the country where the rocks you picked actually needed picked. I grew up in the city, so idealized the country life. I had no purpose and longed for real outdoor chores. I had three imaginary horses who needed fed and groomed every day. The grass is always greener on the other side.
My family lived on a little island in the Bronx, so my father used to say, “Why don’t you take a long walk off a short pier” when he wanted us out of his hair. Bob’s parents used to suggest he and his three brothers go play in traffic.
Looking back, we had it pretty good. No real responsibilities, nothing to do and all day to do it, running with the neighborhood kids, trying not to get pecked at by the swans in the cove at the end of the street.