These Rocks, These Bones

I walked amongst giants today, all sandstone shoulders and quartz spines. I stood on their lips and looked at what they spoke to: the meandering river, the ever-arching light on its merry way of illumine, anticline and syncline folds under hemlock blankets.

I turned around and empathized with a thin, dense layer of crushed coal under an incredible bed of layered rock. I am in Appalachia. Maybe I was holding my breath, but I felt that pressure in my own lungs. I inhaled, took a safe step backwards, and marveled at these Appalachian bones.

Crush.

That is exactly what I did to the talus bone in my right foot over five years ago while bouldering. Under tremendous pressure, my talus--also a term for a slope of rocks--snapped and the incident was painless but the aftermath would be painful for the rest of my life. After moments like these, where my hand grazes sandstone and I step over logs and traverse uneven terrain, I'm in a world of not just pain but inflexibility. My foot, like quartz sandstone, will not give, will not bend the way it should.

What am I going to do? I often ask myself in the aftermath of hikes and doing other things that give my life passion. When I'm older? I am afraid for older Sarah.

I came across rocks that appeared brittle with holes like the cavities found inside bones. That's where the marrow lives. Marrow is what keeps you alive.

I will marrow through it.