Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 26, 1991 TAG: 9103260110
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ed Shamy
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
There below the dam, the river has built a field of rocks a few hundred feet long and 50 feet wide. It is one of the river's garbage dumps - a place to unload unwelcome trinkets.
There are bricks, chunks of coal and twisted, rusting hunks of thick metal. There are shards of thick glass - clear, green and brown - that have long since had their sharp edges ground to harmless curves by the water.
Most of all, though, there are stones. They've been worn and tumbled and sanded by the river. Some are flat and smooth - perfect for skipping on a clean throw into the water - and others have been worked for so long by the water that they are polished to a gloss. There are round, pockmarked rocks with the imprints of shells. There are sandstone pebbles and stones that you can snap in half with your bare hands.
You stand on the rock fields, next to that water, and you need to throw, to reunite those two earthy elements - rock and water. An ancient calling begs you to pick up one stone, just one, and toss it, to rejoin that fragmented piece of planet with the river's chase.
Once you answer that call, there is no way to deny the next. And the next.
This is not an acquired craving, like chocolate or basketball.
This need to throw is innate, something we carry within our primate hearts from the hair-covered days when we slept in the treetops. Homo sapiens learned to eat grubs. Then, homo learned to throw rocks into the water.
Millions of years have robbed us of our love for grub snacks. That has gone the way of our tails and our appendixes.
But babies still emerge from the womb ready to throw.
A son of mine, not yet a year and a half old, recently unleashed a plaintive wail that might have revealed the lad was part wolf.
I understood. I knew the young man was yearning to answer the demands of the heritage of the species. Besides, he was whipping little rubbery Big Birds around inside the house and might have brained somebody.
And so we went, following the well-worn migratory path to the riverside. To Wasena Park, to the rocks and to the water's edge.
Once there, son sensed that fulfillment was near.
He stared at the forest green thickness of the water rushing past him. Water.
At the ground. Rocks.
Water. Rocks. Throw.
And he did.
He threw his heart out, little hands hurling those rounded stones back into the river that had borne them to this site.
It was a wrenching sight, this tiny son, flesh of my flesh, complying with the command of his species, showing me that he was prepared to carry the torch into the next millennium.
Unfortunately, this rite of passage unfolded on opening day of the trout fishing season, and the several dozen scowling men in hip waders nearby were not much interested in evolution or fulfillment of the human soul.
Rock tossing was interfering with their fishing.
So we threw a couple hundred stones and we left.
by CNB