Shadow Thoughts

I was walking and watching my shadow yesterday. As I did, I could fool myself into believing it was the shadow of young man, because the hair was bouncing, and the step was light. But the truth of the hair is silver, and the step is made with aged bone. And the evidence of gravity is all over the outer shell. But that’s all okay. I’m here, and I’m taking the approach of mountains.

When I was in Marathon last weekend, I got to see the remnants of the Ouachita Mountains. Formed several hundred million years ago when the South American plate collided with the North American plate, they were likely as tall as the Rockies. Now, they’re a shadow of their former self, deeply eroded after eons of being swept by wind and rain. But they still have presence and they’re still mountains, and you know they’re not bemoaning their former glory.

And here I am, deeply eroded by sun and gravity. But I’m still standing and I’m still a man. And there’s nothing I can do about the passage of time except to acknowledge that one day I, too, will be ground down, washed into the sea, turned into a sediment, maybe even to be compressed into a hard rock. But if I’m lucky, maybe one day, I’ll be lifted up with another mountain range and find bits of myself on a peak, 10,000 feet in the air. And won’t that be a view?

John W. Wilson is the author of The Long Goodbye: A Caregiver’s Tale