The Weight of Stone

We measure our lives in small increments. A breath, a step, the turning of a page. We forget that the earth does not share our urgency. It sits in the silence of centuries, indifferent to the heat or the cold. To stand on high ground is to feel the sudden, sharp realization of one’s own brevity. The rock does not move. It does not ask to be seen. It simply is. We build our houses and our histories in the valleys, but the truth of the world is kept in the peaks, where the air is thin and the wind has no name. There is a comfort in this distance. To be small is not to be nothing. It is merely to be a guest in a place that was here long before we arrived, and will remain long after we have gone. What remains when the noise of the day finally settles into the stone?

Patricia Saraiva has captured this stillness in her image titled Serra da Piedade. It reminds me that some things are meant to endure without our permission. Does the mountain feel the weight of the sky?