Sometimes I find reason to believe that God has a twisted sense of humor. Not that I'm particularly religious, but occassionally I stumble into one of those moments that makes me cock my head and wonder how coincidental a coincidence really is. Like those moments when I've been thinking about how I really ought to call so-and-so who I haven't talked to in three months, and the next thing I know, my phone is singing its little tune and guess whose name is on the screen? Or that moment when I'm beginning my climb up the Devil's Marbleyard while laughing off my sister who keeps fretting about the whole pile of rocks coming tumbling down, when lo-and-behold, I hear a rumble and look up in time to see a refrigerator sized boulder tumbling down the mountain right towards me. Maybe God was trying to tell me that I can scoff all I want, but at the end of the day it's not up to me whether the marbleyard remains nothing but stationary rock.
At the same time that I was frozen in a bit of a mental quandry about whether the sight that I was viewing was actually happening, Jenny heard the rumble and without looking up, determined that the entire marbleyard was in fact falling, concluded that we were all soon to be as flat as Stanley, and began to cry. All this, I assume, while moving as fast as a cat from a bath, because by the time that I took my eyes off of the falling boulder, she was already at the far side of the marbleyard.
I had somewhat cajoled and prodded my sister and brother-in-law into hiking this hike with me. At exactly one week, our vacation wasn't quite long enough to get them on board with the hour and a half drive from the vacation home to the trailhead, when this was the longest period of time in two months that they would be able to remain contently in one spot amidst their "post-military" family visiting. Nevertheless, I pulled the sad little sister card, and the next day, she, Justin, my dad, and I were all piled into the car. I promised them that it would be awesome.
And, as it played out, it was quite awesome to watch a 5,000 pound rock roll down a mountainside, not 100 feet away. I only wished that we had not been at the bottom of the mountain.
Almost four years ago, I climbed the marbleyard for the very first time with some new college friends. My mouth has a habit of moving faster than my head and even when I do manage to rein in my word vomit, my head isn't always on the socially-aware wavelength. And so, when I commented while standing atop a big round faced rock forming the top of a little cave about the prospect of it falling that "it doesn't matter if you're on top or on bottom, you're screwed either way," I might have asked for the laughing that followed. Now four years later, my comment seemed to have taken on the meaning with which it was uttered.
Before the boulder began to fall, I had complained about the family following me up the rock scramble like a parade of ants, and so I had separated myself a bit from the group. Looking at the marbleyard, I was towards the left of the field about a third of the way up the first climb and my family was slightly towards the right of the field about the same distance up. The tumbling boulder began it's motion about 100 feet up from us (almost at the first plateau) and just slightly to my left. It didn't take long for me to decide that it might be wise for me to move, lest the boulder continue do the same in my direction. Unfortunately, to anyone who has ever been to the boulder field, you will understand that the rocks make for a very nice largescale replica of a plinko board. The boulder was the ball, and I was meant to place my bets on where I suspected that the ball would not land. I decided to hedge my bets and try to get off of the field completely.
I hopped as nimbly as I've ever hopped from one rock to the next, hoping that the rocks under my feet would remain firmly rooted in place. Luckily for me, they did, and by the time I made it safely to where the rest of the party was convened at the side of the yard and was able to look up, the boulder had stopped moving. My dad said that it fell about 15 feet until it came to rest among the other boulders. When I looked back in that direction, it was not apparent that anything at all had happened.
Jenny was in tears ("I thought we all were dead... especially Annie!"), Justin was attempting to console her, my dad was speechless, and I was trying to decide if the definite lack of any emotion that I had felt during the entire incident was a good thing or a bad thing. The unspoken understanding was that we would not be continuing our climb. Jenny was able to compose herself and we turned to begin our walk back.
"Maybe we can do a different hike," I heard myself say.
"I just want to go pick peaches," said Jenny. And so we did. And with those peaches, I made a delicious peach and blueberry pie. Even if I did forget to bake the crust.
The conclusion:
When life gives you falling rocks, move as fast as you can back to the safety of your kitchen and make pie.
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In all seriousness, though, this situation could have been extremely dangerous. Has anyone else experienced a rock fall at the marbleyard? I am hesitant to return. I knew that it could happen of course, but after 6 or 7 visits, I had never so much as seen a small rock tumble. Had anyone been in the path of that rock, they would have been undoubtedly dead. Fortunately, family was the only group on the marbleyard that I could tell at that point.
