They were Rockateers, Keith and Ray, and he was the first person after five years of building rock stacks to be invited along.
Three men in their fifties.
It was a hot clear day in June. They parked the truck and walked some distance across a stony field to reach the site. As they walked Keith brought out a joint. Part of the ritual, he was told, but declined because he felt unsure of himself—nervous about how he’d perform with the rocks.
At the edge of the field where the rock stacking took place they were in full view of the highway. He said the amazing part was the way people honked their horns in encouragement, or shouted out as their cars sped by: “Way to go!” “Good for you!” He said building the stacks was like giving a performance before a continually applauding audience—only the audience kept changing, kept whooshing by.
They spent three hours at the site. For a while he helped Keith and Ray lift and carry rocks—there were some large ones—and then, like a disciple, he was invited to make his own stack and made, in fact, five. He said each man, as he worked, became absorbed, quiet, even though the intermittent honking of horns continued.
Keith told him there was a current of energy that travelled from rock to rock as one was balanced upon the other and that because of this the rocks seemed to snap into place in the most delicate, yet unlikely of ways.
He experienced this for himself.
Ray made stacks that resembled animals and searched for some time for small, round, matching stones to represent ears. Keith made beautiful geometrical shapes, several over seven feet tall. His own stacks were modest but one, an oddly balanced spiral of four rocks, was said by Ray to be stunning.
Each stack, he said, looked like a monument. Looked as if the earth had produced it in praise of itself and he and Keith and Ray were merely helpers.
When they finished there was the satisfied walk across the field to the truck. Then a stop at the Prairie Inn for a beer, another part of the ritual.
Afterwards, at Keith’s house, Keith lit another joint. This time he had a drag. When he came home he looked happy but bewildered. My daughter and I made supper while he lay on the bed staring out the window. It was some time later when he told me all this.