Ammons Sermons in Stones

Tales of family, friends, & fly fishing
1. Auflage 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5439-8721-8
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 144 Seiten

Sermons in Stones is a collection of eighteen beautifully-crafted short stories, anecdotes, and personal narratives offering thoughtful and profound reflection on the author's life experiences in a 'mountain wilderness carved by a river'. This memoir-of-sorts is a celebration of family, friends, and fly fishing from a man who is torn between the trials of the modern world and the simpler, serene ways of nature. With a poetic voice and pensive mood that invites the reader to step right into the scene, these essays reflect the same tranquility as one would find high in the Colorado mountains.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Ammons, David

Leseproben

Sermons in stones

“And this our life, exempt from public haunt,Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,Sermons in stones, and good in everything.”

~ William Shakespeare

My boyhood summers were spent in the mountains of Colorado, where my brothers and I received an education that surpassed anything we learned academically. We awoke each day surrounded by the reliable and comforting cadence of the wilderness. We immersed ourselves in the earth; we walked through woods as softly as the Arapaho, relishing the discovery of live snakes and dead mammals. We constructed rafts from timbers, grand ships replete with ramming logs in preparation for the battles fought on a stagnant pond. We watched bear, deer, marmot, and moose walk through the yard and memorized their tracks.

We learned how to fish, graduating from spinning rods to fly rods and making increasingly educated guesses about the fly pattern that would elicit a strike. Subsequently, we learned how to gut a trout with two simple slices of a knife and a pull with our index finger. We built forest lean-tos, honed climbing skills, and observed the tenacity of wildflowers growing above timberline.

My younger brother would wake up each day, grab his bow and arrows and disappear alone into the woods, to return only as dusk was turning to darkness and bats took shape in the blue-black sky. No one ever worried about him. My older brothers were brave and immortal, validating their fearlessness by scaling the granite face of Boston Peak, which looms large on the western wall of the canyon. Ultimately, they parlayed their love of local climbs to scale great summits in Asia and South America.

My escape from the public haunt was walking to the river to fish at the margins of dark and light. Captivated by the eternal flow and hypnotized by the eddies, pools, and riffles, I tried to understand how a fish thinks. I shook with nervous delight when I hooked a trout. Still do.

We grew up sons of a Presbyterian minister, but I’ve always felt the mountains were our religion. Our father certainly had ample reason to be disappointed in his family as we were mildly rebellious against the expectation that we evolve our faith and beliefs through the teachings of the church. We looked for opportunities to mock, albeit in a completely harmless and good-natured way, the rigid structure of the Presbyterian service. And we sought as many chances as possible to distract and amuse ourselves. One associate pastor would open the Prayer for Illumination with the words “Let us spray.” At least that’s the way we heard it, and we would giggle about it as mom’s white-gloved hand would be placed gently on our leg as a signal to come back to order.

The youngest, Joel, is famous for a good-hearted church story, something only a playful personality of a preacher’s kid could pull off in the middle of a crowded sanctuary. Mom had four small boys in tow, and we’d typically attend the 9:00 a.m. service ahead of Sunday school. It must have required some muster for her to sit near the front of the sanctuary, as was our custom, with four wriggly boys. One Easter Sunday the church was really full, as it tends to be on Easter, and we may have been running a little late or perhaps mom’s discretion was in play, but we ended up together towards the back of the church. Now…my brothers and I didn’t normally pay close attention to the liturgy, preferring to elbow each other as we would doodle with the pew pencils and play Hangman. But on this particular day after the collection began, for some reason, Joel took notice.

It was a full congregation, these pews in that beautiful, stone gothic sanctuary were packed—and as the collection plate began to wend its way back and forth, pew to pew, the pile of bills and tithing envelopes quickly grew. As the plates approached the rear of the sanctuary five rows ahead of us, then four, the offering was overflowing to the point that folks had to push down on the pile. Joel’s eyes grew bigger and bigger as the plate was three, then two rows ahead of us. Wonder and amazement broadened as the collection plate was passed one row in front of us, dollars literally spilling over the edge. Then, standing up in the pew with mom holding on to his legs, his eyes big as dinner plates, and in a precocious voice loud enough for nearly the entire congregation to hear, Joel said, “Oh mom…is all that for dad!?” That solicited chuckles from the churchgoers but is also underscored the fact that my brothers and I were not good Christians.

However, I believe we have all upheld a deep spiritual connection with the grandeur of the Rocky Mountains. Whatever each of us believes is the definition of God, He is clearly at work there, painting masterpieces of rock and tree and sky with every shade of light, works of art that beckon us and wrap us in permanence and awe. I remember asking my eldest brother once if he believed that God intended for us to be in one place, that is, is there a part of the earth designated as set aside for an individual to be closest to Him? He said he hadn’t thought that way and gave me a look of slight disdain like I was buzzed. I was. But my state of mind didn’t mean I couldn’t soberly determine how I felt about standing in the yard surrounded by a multitude of huge granite faces towering over the narrow canyon.

Our summers were cradled beneath the shadows of those monuments on either side of the canyon—Sunrise Peak, Crouching Lion, Boston Peak, and Sleeping Elephant—all of which I believed were as grand as anything Yosemite could offer. These were stones so steadfast, they served as timepieces. The moment the sun nicked the top of Sunrise Peak on the west wall, it was my signal to get out from under the covers of the army cot on the porch and slink to the river. At the end of the day, as the darkening forest floor pushed the fading sun up Crouching Lion on the east side, it meant we had about another hour before the dusk, with its unseen noises and shifting shapes, began to feel menacing enough to raise the hair on the back of our necks and usher us back to the warmth and safety of the cabin.

Our grandfather Herb was intimately familiar with the works of God in the natural world and liked it so much he retired there, moving from Hastings, Nebraska with my grandmother Clair to a summer cabin on the edge of a seasonal stream. After a couple of winters bracing themselves against temperatures that were below zero—inside their bedroom, no less—Herb decided to build a snug, four-season, insulated cabin. Spending entire midwinter days under layers of electric blankets was not going to cut it. Thus began years of driving up and down the canyon road in his turquoise 1958 Chevrolet Apache step-side pickup. Day after day, he would pull into the cut-outs on the road’s curves to find the materials he needed, starting with rocks and stones that would serve as the cabin’s foundation. With a stance slightly bow-legged, Herb would nose around the cutout looking for a face, that one side of the stone that would align with other faces to form a smooth wall. He’d pick up the rock, turn it in his small hands, and with his deer-skin work gloves brush the dirt and dust aside before he was satisfied the stone could join one of many piled in the yard.

Later, when he must have finally been convinced he had all the rocks he needed, he would drive to those same highway cut-outs, day after day, and shovel gravel into the bed of the Apache, which he would then shovel back out of the bed of the truck to form a grand mound once he returned to the construction site. These piles of gravel he later sifted by hand through a homemade screen to separate rocks and stones from sand, sand fine enough to be used in mortar mix.

Then, day after day, Herb would mix sand, mortar, and water in his wheelbarrow, turning the mix into the consistency of pancake batter with a garden hoe. Wheelbarrow by wheelbarrow, stone by stone, he began to build. And day after day he would make incremental progress, ten to twenty stones at a time depending on the season and the weather conditions. His work ethic was a testament to patience, his skills worthy of the nickname the family gave him—Rocky. Herb’s allegiance to work was pragmatic and pedestrian. He was steadfast, mechanical, and unhurried in his pursuit of solid foundations. Those retiring days spent in the sanctity of the Poudre Canyon were witness to the fondness he held for the mountains and his deep devotion for our grandmother, qualities that were nurtured into proverbs he ultimately imparted upon our family.

I don’t think he has completely let go. I hear him in the yard. He closes doors inside the cabin on cloudless, windless days. He mischievously moves things around to lead me to believe I have misplaced them. He sings on breezy days, his strong tenor mingling church hymns with the whooshing of baritone winds dancing through the branches. At times he’s even made an appearance. A guy I hired to remodel an outbuilding on the property once saw the feathery outline of a man inside the original cabin, whose doors and windows were completely locked. That guy never returned to finish the job. The ghost Herb stirs whenever people gather, his inimitable spirit...