The Basin

(Please click on the title for a reading aloud by the author.)

Thousands of years ago a lake occupied the space. Fish swam here, waves lapped the shores, stones got tumbled smooth by the water’s action. The air was soft and there were lake sounds. There were no people.

Hiking across the now arid range land of the Galisteo Basin, R. and I noticed the rounded pebbles. They lay everywhere. We are both rock hounds and started gathering a few. There was a moment each particular stone came to sit still. They have been sitting here all this time. I think about beginnings and endings and continuity. I think about our place in this world. So many changes around us are of a grand scale and we do not have any power over them. These processes are in motion at this moment.

Our lives afford us only a brief view, a brief experience. We see evidence of how entirely different things used to be but what will come is an unknown.

Gordon Bunker