This Dumb Thing I Do

I’m going down to the stream near my cabin tucked in a sheltered bluff in the foothills of Grandfather Mountain in the middle of nowhere North Carolina.  I’m going to strip off a dead branch perhaps three feet in length and maybe an inch thick and collect buckets of shiny rocks.  And I’m going to toss stones of varying shapes and sizes in the air with my right hand and thwack them with the stick held in my left hand. 

This I will do for hours on end and pretend that I am running through lineups of various major league teams from the 1960s and 70s, with each thwack and swing representing the fortunes of each batter.

 

Batters will strike out if my aim is not pure and the game will be strictly binary in nature.  Rocks that clear the stream will be home runs; everything else is a pop out or grounder. 

This I will do for hours over a period of days, my hands worn leathery from the rough texture of my “bats,” which will have to be constantly replaced as rocks carve grooves and cracks into the wood until the shredded sticks shatter. 

I will play game after game this way, hidden from the view of my wife and others who will mock this silly pastime as my father did in my youth when I spent hour after hour hitting rocks with sticks at a nearby ball field.  Though he shook his head, it did sharpen my eye and hone my hitting skills by the time my Little League years approached. 

I still love hitting rocks with sticks, the rhythm of toss and thwack and towering trajectories that clear the riverbank and disappear into the woods with a whisper of striking leaves.  It’s what I call retirement. 

Others love to toss strings with hooks into shallow water or hitting little white balls with sticks into man-made pits of sand.  I like hitting rocks with sticks over running water. 

I see nothing wrong with that!