We had been hiking several clicks into the Bob Marshall Wilderness area. The trail was bereft of human artifacts like gum wrapper foil or the scent of Axe cologne. We rounded a sharp elbow then headed up a steep pitch.
I hokey-pokied over a pile of bear scat about the time I saw we were hiking by a patch of sun-warmed huckleberries. We reached a clearing then sat on a slab of granite to squirrel-munch on our processed provisions. Below us was a two-foot stack of deliberately placed rocks.
How do objects of such heft and irregularity defy gravity? Some sort of ethereal equilibrium that eludes clumsy, big-footed humans. The stacked rocks layered over the smell of oozing pine resin and billowing cottonwood gave me a sense of presence. I wondered about neurotransmitters like serotonin splaying out in my brain like buckshots of well-being. Then thought better of it.
I recalled the stunning color plates I had seen in one of Andrew Goldsworthy's coffee table books - the leaves, the mud, the pine cones and twigs exquisitely re-arranged by an ego-centric sculptor getting his conceptual art woodie.
So inspired, I jubilantly sacrificed my edible vittles to erect my magnum opus – a wilderness shrine of meticulously balanced Hostess Ding Dongs.
It was as if suddenly all the Little Debby Snacks in the universe didn’t exist.
