Between a Rock and a Hard place..

There is a place between pavement and where concrete meet, like the space between a rock and a hard place, where everything is drawn to drain toward the depths where places can only be imagined. It is one of these places where a writer lets their imagination flow among the debris they find and they pause to search for tidbits they can weave into a story, like the single feather mixed with leaves, grass, and seeds.

I remember my four children when they were quite small, the youngest three and the oldest around seven, and their mother was no longer with us, for reasons I will not labor or elaborate upon. it is enough to say she was no longer with us.

We hiked a lot in those early days as I tried desperately to find ways to move beyond the darkness that tried to engulf me. With half breathes on the steep climbs in the foothills around Pocatello, Idaho which gave us a vigorous exercise, even when that is not really your intent, and I would tell my children stories to occupy their time and take the darkness from mine.

On one of our hikes above the water tower to the West of the city we came across some white stones which are quite common in our neck of the high desert, along with a single feather which began the story I would begin to tell them. It was hot, dry and the sun high. Dust would kick up and mingle with scents of dried grass and stunted sagebrush with each step we would take, when we came upon the stones which became Pegasus droppings which had dried hard as stone, and the feather from one of its wings of the Pegasus when it had been startled by noisy hikers and lifted his wings high and wide and possibly flew away. Shush—I cautioned them. Whisper, I whispered, so we would not scare one away, possibly on the trail ahead.

Their voices became quiet and I noticed how some were bright-eyed and looking about as they had found some more Pegasus droppings while I spun a tale that I would never really ever completely recall, but the darkness lifted like the fog dissipating when the sun comes up and drives it away, and those things that troubled me seemed far away, and my children carried little white stones and single feather, and I pray a little more from that trail tale that day.