Remember —those arms holding you felt like someone was slowly carving your name in sandstone.
Like they wanted to remember you always, to walk carrying a small piece of you;
their pocket heavy with an unexpected gift.
Like you were a found treasure, a small piece of perfectly formed wood that they want to hold on to.
Don’t let go of that feeling of being there; suspended in time, waiting.
John Muir wrote that nature “is eternally flowing from use to use, beauty to yet higher beauty;
and we soon cease to lament waste and death,
and rather rejoice and exult in the imperishable,
unspendable wealth of the universe,
and faithfully watch and wait the reappearance of everything that melts and fades and dies about us,
feeling sure that its next appearance will be better and more beautiful than the last.”
That is the feeling I have now.
Nothing was wasted with you and within the perfect part of nature we faithfully inhabited, over and over together;
because a part of me believes in a higher beauty.
After I melt away this time, I will calm myself like the sea.
After all, we are all made of salt and we are all made of water.
And one day our carved names will all fade and recede in the sandstone.
Excerpts by John Muir, from The Writings of John Muir, Volume 2, Ed. William Frederic Bade, Copyright © 1916, Houghton Mifflin
