Five Rocks
alabaster
A lopsided moon rose over the cove. I had paddled halfway out, and except for two men with flashlights at the boat ramp and a night heron I spooked from the bow of the Dodecahedron, it was quiet. The men with flashlights had seemed agitated, either with their small motor launch or each other or both, and darkness was not helping them solve their problem. Their voices were low and harried as I glided past without a sound, and then one of them shouted, “Not yet!” At that moment the night heron took wing again with a displeased croak. The water was very still, covered with floating pads of sea lettuce. On the west shore, a few of the cottages still had their back lights on. As a child, I could not foresee the kind of freedom I would have as an adult, to be able to slip my kayak into the water at midnight and go out to watch the moon come up, simply because I wanted to, and to not be subject to the permission of anyone. Back then, if I managed to escape our house at night, I would wander around the neighborhood, walking through the yards like a visitor from another planet, seeing all the lives in the lighted windows and enjoying my invisibility. Occasionally a dog would bark from inside and a human voice would reprimand it, telling it to pipe down. Even though I knew whose house it was and whose dog it was, everything was different at that hour. I became an alien being. My imprisonment and my fury lessened the farther I went up the street. I only knew my imprisonment was wrong and I could not fix it.
: a compact fine-grained gypsum, white or delicately shaded and often translucent, used for ornamental vessels, figures, and statuary.
asteroid
This crossing will take a certain length of measure called time. You pay for your passage with whatever you carry, scooped up and salvaged in your last minutes before boarding. Didn’t your hand go out in search of something, anything – one precious object to save as if from a flame? Because the world is on fire behind you, a fact you find consoling, what makes the journey necessary to undertake, the impossibility of turning back. Ahead, they say, is too new to name, motion as your geography – rough, rocking, rhythmic music nothing like a lullaby. But soon your hand will loosen and open, and the weight that was in it will fly.
: one of the many small celestial bodies in orbit around the sun.
cirque
Picture a giant-sized barrel chair. Usually the tarn is that puddle on the seat. Except for Lakes of the Clouds, nearly two miles up, above the tree line on Mount Washington. We took the Ammonoosuc Ravine Trail, past Gem Pool, scrambling over the wet stone staircase until there was only rock, lichen, sky, ninety miles of visibility to the west, the rarest of days on this peak: clear, sunny. We sat by the ponds and fell under their cold alpine spell. We threw our heads back and sucked in the troposphere, the stratosphere, the ionosphere. We remembered the Pleistocene, when all this was buried under a half-mile of glacier while the Laurentide ice sheet tucked a slow grinding blanket over North America. We knew where we had come from but not where we were going. In less than a year, there would be no we. Seventy-five degrees at the trailhead. Forty at the top. We were glad to have jackets in our packs.
: a deep steep-walled recess or hollow, horseshoe-shaped or semicircular in plan view situated high on the side of a mountain and produced by the erosive activity of a mountain glacier – it often contains a small lake.
algal biscuit
Many folks are unaware there is a saltwater alternative to this popular standard. Here follow my preferred recipe ingredients. Three cups all-purpose flour: consider harvesting, then small-batch roasting and milling, the ripened seeds of Zostera marina. You will need official permission to collect them from a protected underwater meadow, plus scuba gear. Three tablespoons sugar: if you are nearby to a coast, you could forage for sugar kelp, but I would actually recommend sugar sand. You’ll have to find some maple trees. Another good reason to go to Vermont for the weekend. One-half teaspoon salt: you know, the evaporated kind. The pink Himalayan stuff is pretty but will not make a lick of difference to the taste. Four teaspoons baking powder and one-half teaspoon cream of tartar: do not substitute baking soda. Trust me. Three-quarters COLD butter: can be made from a variety of milks, such as seal, sea lion, manatee, dolphin, whale. Churn by hand while practicing gratefulness. One egg: really cool if you can get your hands on a whelk egg case. If not, a skate egg, aka mermaid’s purse, will do. Some people use black-market fairy penguin eggs, but this species is endangered, so it is very despicable for them to do that. One cup whole milk: see butter, above.
: any of various hemispherical or disk-shaped calcareous masses, up to 20 cm in diameter, produced in fresh water as a result of precipitation by various blue-green algae.
conglomerate
Meet the man who lost it all – home, family, friends, job. I can get details. Are town recreation officials giving certain youth sports teams preferential treatment? Digging into this. She believed he was her real father until 23andMe indicated otherwise. Exclusive interview to come. Who is stealing eggs from this neighbor’s chickens? Following up. Resident claims landlords are conspiring to keep rents high. Think about infographic potential. UFO sighting – need I say more? Not just stealing the eggs from her chickens but also pulling up her prize peonies. See attached pic she sent me, showing shovel they left behind plus empty beer bottles. Wow, possible DNA retrieval for forensic evidence? When the water rises and the fires come, will we get out in time? Will we have enough insurance? Is the invisible hand of the marketplace still invisible? A street-level opinion poll. Also developing stories: belligerents march, nurses strike, children have had it with school. Police demonstrate force. Mayor instructs us to get out the lifeboats. The powerful do not respond. The best lack all conviction, again. She now reports her shih tzu is missing. I’m on it.
: a coarse-grained clastic sedimentary rock, composed of rounded to subangular fragments larger than 2 mm in diameter (granules, pebbles, cobbles, boulders) set in a fine-grained matrix of sand or silt, and commonly cemented by calcium carbonate, iron oxide, silica, or hardened clay; the consolidated equivalent of gravel.
