The Field of Stones

by Frank M Sheldon

I was on the field of stones? Every direction looked the same. I would inevitably veer off course and get lost.

  No. I could not get lost. I was already lost. I did not know where I was now and never had.

  I reverted to my old ways and did nothing. The only difference from before was that I spent most of the time in the shelter away from the oppressive view of the field of stones. There was that. Nevertheless, I could not stop wondering about “there,” the other place I had seen on the western horizon.

  Then it came to me.

  I knew what I had seen was on the western horizon because that is the way the sun moved everyday. If I walked toward where the sun moved, I could stay on course. It was the last thought I had before I fell to sleep.

  When I awoke, I again climbed to the top of the structure to be certain of my destination and to watch how the sun moved in relationship to it. Indeed, it seemed to line up perfectly. I came down and looked around, taking my time, taking every familiar stone in. I was surprised at how easy it was to leave. I had put so much time in building the shelter. Yet, I was confident that when I arrived at my destination, I would still have the skill to build another. I kept track of the sun for a while longer to be sure of which way it moved, then set out.

  As I walked across the stones, I discovered them to be more demanding than I had imagined. In the past, I had learned all the stones in my immediate vicinity. I knew them all. Now I was going across stones where every single one was new. Although it looked the same, it was not the same. When I had hurt myself in the past, it held little significance, as I would just rest until it healed. Now I was on a journey, and an injury that required a long stop might throw off my direction somehow, or what I was heading for might no longer be there if I was delayed too long.

  Near the end of this first day, I looked back and was disappoint to see how close to the shelter I still was. Walking over the stones required all my attention, and this was tiring. I took breaks. I had to. I fell asleep wishing I was already where I was going.

  The next day, I was sore from sleeping on a bed of random stones, something I had not done in a while. This was the first time I had slept on stones since I had started clearing them off the ground, what now seemed such a long time ago. At the end of this day, I would take the time to make a sleeping place.

  I walked on. My feet began to find the more stable stones by themselves. The less I thought about it, the better it went. I needed no breaks this day and walked on until any view of my former shelter had disappeared. On the horizon in front of me, still nothing. After I could walk no more, I cleared stones away to bare earth just before I fell into a deep sleep.

  Another day, and I walked. Before sleep, it took only one look out toward the horizon to see that it was still empty. The next morning, I just sat there wondering. Perhaps what I had seen was gone. Perhaps it was something never to be seen again. I looked around me. Nothing in any direction but the field of stones. I had left my shelter only to find myself where I had always been. Nowhere. It all seemed too familiar.

  I could forget what I had seen. I could forget what I had thought I had seen. Had I really seen it? I could forget, and stay where I was and build a new shelter. That would be enough. I slept and awoke again in the same spot, my mind gradually emptying of my struggles to understand.

  One day, without really thinking, I stood up and walked on over the field of stones in the direction of the setting sun. Since it did not really matter, I would continue until I could walk no more. I decided not to stop, but walk until sleep took me. As the sun moved to the West, I followed it longer than I had ever done so. Keeping the sun with me without looking at it, I felt its presence guiding me.

  I was still walking when I fell to sleep. Although I did not know how it could possibly be, I was still walking when I awoke. And I saw it immediately. A hint of color beckoning on the western horizon. I was sure this was the same thing I had seen from the top of the structure. It was only a little larger, and I still had no sense of what it was. I would find out. I would not rest until I found out.

  As I walked, the mote on the horizon before me began to dominate my landscape. I was still acutely aware of it even if I turned completely around. Soon, I could see how far I had to go, and it was not far at all. Yet as near as it was, I remember nothing else until I woke with the sun in my eyes lying in the field of stones. I was so close now, that I ran the last distance, flying over the stones as if on air.

  Before me, it towered up to the sky in a complexity of beauty impossible to fathom. I did not pause now to ponder why or how, as the majesty of this clearly living wonder filled me with awe. I looked up through the branches from every angle as I walked around it and listened as they creaked in a gentle breeze far above my head, while the leaves whispering in an almost familiar language.

  I was no longer alone.

  In the days that followed, I cleared stones from around the tree to expose the sand, but here it was different. Dark. It felt almost like flesh when I closed my fingers around it. The smell of the earth along with the tree that towered over me was so strong. I almost could not bear it, yet I never thought of leaving. Soon, I became used to it, and was somehow even protected by it.

  I began to build my second shelter under the tree. I made it the same way, only a little larger. When I was not working, I would often lie and look up into the green depths of the tree. Other times, I gathered fallen leaves and sticks, sorting them into rows, pondering what I could do with them.

  In the earth revealed after the clearing of the stones and leaves around the tree, something was changing. Green shoots begun to come up. They were not all the same. Colors of all kinds began to bud and bloom, each a tiny world.

  I would never leave this place. I would never want to.

  I was surprised to find that I missed walking and began making a series of paths away from the tree and around it. In a few places, I made sitting structures from stones so I could rest. I made them to face in toward the tree, but I also could sit facing away. When I did, I always found myself scanning the horizon. I never saw anything else, only what was always there.

  I learned to use stones to break other stones until I had just the shape needed. From that, it occurred to me that I could use the branches that fell now and then from the tree. With the sharp edges of some stones that had broken just right, I could shape them. Other branches, I split and yet again until I had pieces thin enough to easily bend. With these, I could combine what fell from the tree into almost any form. Some had a purpose, like the basket I made yet, in the end, the only things I could think to put in the basket were more sticks to make more baskets. I did finally make a seat, one I could easily pick up and move around. This took almost as much time as an entire shelter, but as the days were endless, what matter. When the chair was done, I carried it out a long way and sat gazing back at the tree.

  Meanwhile, the new structures I continued to build became larger and more sophisticated and now had multiple rooms. Although I often took long breaks, I always returned to making more.

 

  In my earlier days here, during the making of the first shelter, I had broken many stones in half and had not always used them. Not long after, it had come to me that I could set the stones with the flat side up into the ground in front of the tree where my first shelter also was. I kept doing this, filling in the gaps between, until I had a broad hard-surfaced court. Something about it pleased me greatly, I am not sure why. It became the other place I often placed my chair. When I made it, I had started in the middle and worked my way out equally in all directions. Because of this, it had turned out almost perfectly round. Shoots of green had begun to come up between the stones not long ago, but never took over. It all seemed good to me.

  One day, I took the seat made of branches a longer way out than usual. I sat and let my mind come to a rest until there was nothing but silence. I waited. Nothing came to me. It seemed like something would, but nothing did. Finally I stood up and walked back
to the tree.

  When I arrived, I stopped dead still, transfixed by what lay before me. While I was away, the center of the court I had made of with the leftover stones had fallen in completely. Only a band of stones around the edge was left. Yet, in spite of the loss, I was not upset. In the middle of this favored place, something new had appeared.

  I had never seen water before, yet it looked achingly familiar.

  I sat by the side of the pool, trying to fathom its depth, but instead seeing the reflection of the tree above. The tree and the sky. I knew there was no longer anything else for me to do here. I did not know how I knew, but it was certain. I was done. I was done, and that was the last thought I had until sleep came for me.

  When I awoke by the pool, it was not the usual light of day that greeted me, but a darkness overhead I had never known. Yet, within that darkness, infinitesimally small lights blazed like tiny grains of sand catching the sunlight, and pierced out to me from the blackness. As I watched, more appeared, then more until their numbers were greater than the stones that had surrounded me for my entire existence.

  I stood up. The horizon seemed to slip below my feet as the sky reflected up from the glassy pool leaving me on the cusp of a starry void.