Messing With the Future

Messing With the Future

Noel Laflin

5-15-19

I like rocks, which is a good thing, as my small backyard is chock full of them.

Even before a single piece of furniture entered the new home, some thirty-five years ago, rocks were dealt with first.

The soil, hard as clay, was firmly held in place with rocks of all shapes and sizes. And so they were dug out with shovel and pickax and in some cases, crowbars.

Piles of rocks were moved about as new areas of the garden took shape. To help with drainage concerns, rocks were laid back down in the earth like an underground highway to direct anticipated future downpours away from the house and out into a concrete lined drainage ditch just beyond our fence. Consequently, flooding has never been an issue.

Even after all of that redistribution, rocks ruled the day back then, and still do. I pick out the unusual ones and place them against ponds and posts, line pathways, lose them for a decade or so, and then uncover them years later while digging a grave for a fallen feline.

In fact, I have even added foreign rocks to the collection over the years.

Someday perhaps, after I am long gone, someone with a geologically-trained eye might just be digging up my old garden and wonder why rocks, which are normally found in southern Africa, for example, are here in Orange.

“I’ve read that this type of rock is only found along the Zambezi River,” he or she will ponder. “And is this the skull of a cat?”

It’s good to know that there is a remote possibility that I can mess with future generations in such stony fashion.