Stone Woman Walking

StoneWomanWalking5904Stone Woman Walking   Arches National Park             click to enlarge

In Arches National park you can occasionally see the Old Ones going slowly about their business. They move quietly through the canyons of stone intent on their purpose and pay little attention to the soft mortals that scurry ant-like about them. Their journeys are slow and ponderous seeming to us, but then we live in a world that travels in a headlong rush and we must accomplish much in the short period of time allotted to us for we have the desperate need to scratch our mark on the walls of time. Those in the future must know we passed through here. How temporary we must seem to her, if she even contemplates us at all.

Stone Woman Walking has been making this journey for eons. Wrapped in her blanket to ward off the chill of centuries she is not much affected by the ravages of time and little notices the conditions around her. Snow blankets her softly but is gone in moments. The sand-laden wind blowing through the canyons slowly erases her youth but it is of little import. She has had her time. Now the contentment that comes from her journey through the ages settles around her and enhances the constancy that is her beauty. She is not eternal, for all things pass, but she seems so to us. This somehow brings comfort to some of us as we see the fleeting moments that are our lives moving past us at an ever accelerating speed. There are things that last. There is purpose that will continue long after we have faded away. I like that.

The Assembly

The Meeting0255click to enlarge

Dusk is about to set in and there is a very important meeting about to take place. During the heat of the day many of the attending individuals settle into their daily appearance of simple rock formations that slowly bake in the noon day sun, but as dusk arrives they begin their nightly morph into the creatures they truly are.

Ask any traveler that has spent time in the back of beyond about hearing and maybe even seeing, the ghostly rustlings of things moving slowly, heavily, in the near dark just out of eyesight. The sound of sand being compressed until  the grains are one point from becoming powder. Shadows that stretch the wrong way for the setting sun and slow but furtive movement caught out of the corner of their eye, producing the feeling that some kind of transformation is happening that can be felt rather than seen. It’s the imagination made tangible.

There are many creatures that live an entirely different existence than ours, who have thoughts and plans and purposes that do not include us. In fact, they are most likely not even aware of our presence, let alone our soft little bodies. Millennia to them must be the slow ticking of the cosmic clock and they would not understand the brief blinking in and out of existence of our tiny little lives.

But this evening is the beginning of a portentous event, a meeting of many important creatures to settle age old disputes and begin a discussion that will last for centuries and perhaps decide problems that have been vexing them for even longer. Their true shapes are just becoming visible. You can see who many of the principal characters are and try to ascertain who will be a leader, who will be an advocate and who will simply add their voice when it is needed.

If you were to stay out here all night and listen to the sounds of thoughts being spoken at a rate so slowly that it was the deep bass of the elements grinding together, the sound of wind keening around the edges of the rock, the soft whisper of sand being slowly pushed aside by stone creatures who live forever, or at least what seems like forever to us, would you be able to understand at any level of your consciousness what was transpiring. Perhaps, perhaps not, but I believe you would know something momentous was happening. I think you would have dreams that would be fantastical, but you wouldn’t be able to share them with anyone because I don’t think you could live long enough for the thoughts, ideas and concepts to compress into visions you could describe. And that’s alright with me. I’m OK with not knowing everything. Just sharing the experience is enough.

Moab’s Secret Shame

RockDepository0233click to enlarge

For Immediate Release

All Major Wire services; Print Media: On Air News services

Secret Government Rock Depository found in Southwest United States. National Park Service stockpiling incredible amounts of Native Sandstone rock formations. Acres of unused stone and rock carelessly piled in heaps out in the open, exposed to weather and other climatic conditions. Nations treasures at risk. Some stockpiles appear to have been in this conditions for months if not years. Officials refuse to comment. It is unknown how much deterioration of these resources have occurred but some groupings appear to have sustained weathering and damage because of their unprotected status. Shards of stone have been found around the bases of these gentle giants where it has simply flaked off due to neglect.  A National shame, and another American tragedy. Details follow.

We have found that near a small town called Moab in an un-named state there are thousands upon thousands of acres of unused rocks, rock formations, stones, some bushes, a hill and other natural stuff just sitting there in disarray. All of this hidden behind the innocent appearing name of “Arches National Park”, as if it were a legitimate place where you could go and even take your family to see honest stone and rock formations in their natural setting. It appears to have been carefully inventoried and cataloged and in some cases the identity of the various features are on small wooden signs still sitting in plain sight. Ancient and valuable arches are just left willy-nilly about the landscape where anything might befall them. Our researchers slash investigators have found huge holes in the earth where it appears rock formations of an undetermined nature have simply been spirited away, gone forever it seems. But where to? who knows. That’s what we’re trying to determine with this investigation.

One of our crack investigators spoke to a local resident under the promise of anonymity and because he wouldn’t give us his name no matter how much we threatened him, who spoke of mysterious trucks coming and going in the middle of the night driving without lights, and leaving with giant loads under tarps that literally left dents in the road. The tarps didn’t leave dents in the road, that would be dumb, the trucks left the dents in the road. The locals believe that rock formations, especially arches, are being systematically plundered and moved from here, to there. Where ‘there’ might be we’ll see in a moment.

Some of these informers, who we found later to be conspirator-esses, or conspirator-able, so we can’t fully stand behind their statements, believe that many of these formations, arches in particular, are bound for China and also the Far East. If so, what a calamity. What a travesty, our nations incredible, invaluable treasures being traded for t-shirts and flip-flops and cheap metal lawn furniture, I mean, Holy Cow. Wouldn’t that just frost you. But remember before you jump the gun and go all Rambo about this, remember, we can’t prove it. Yet.

On a more plausible note however one of our researchers whom we have a lot of respect for and trust in and kind of like actually, she being cute and friendly and sociable, with long dark hair and big eyes and likes long walks on the beach holdings hands , the Grateful Dead etc., visited another well-known American site called Natural Bridges and swears that there are now new bridges (also known as Arches) in place that she doesn’t remember seeing there before. So what do we  have here? What do we know? Arches are apparently missing from the storage site; new bridges, that we know now are also called arches, are supposedly being seen in another park miles away that weren’t there before. Is the National Park service removing these formations from this storage site, relabeling them and using them in some nefarious plan to enhance other National Parks for some type of financial gain? If So, where is the money going. Money coming ,we presume, from gullible, mis-guided tourists both foreign and domestic, paying fees to enter these augmented parks believing they’re seeing nature in its natural state, when it’s really not, because they’ve been fooled by an uncaring, money-grubbing, greedy government. That’s what we’d like to know. That’s the shame. It doesn’t take a mental midget to come up with the fact that 2 + 2 = hanky-panky. More on the hanky panky-ness of this to come in our next installment of this unbelievable story.

Our team of researchers slash investigators under go an extensive training and certification program here at the Institute and do not go out into the field until we’re certain they have been trained properly and can find their way home again. Every single one of our operatives have had instruction on how to use a cell phone, what roaming means, know where and how their GPS works, how to locate secret sources of information that might be titillating and get them on record, find and recognize gas stations and locate the button that opens the little door where you put the gas in, trick high-ranking officials into making incredibly stupid remarks and then taping them so they can’t weasel out of it later, that’s my personal favorite, and of course the proper and safe steps to take when they can not locate a restroom.

We have the utmost regard for our people and their training and don ‘t have the slightest apprehension nor qualms about sending them into harms way. Our training techniques have been pilfered from all the top-notch intelligence services in the world simply by Googling anything we want to know. That’s how we found top-secret info and incorporated it into our training program. Facts like, if you’re lost in the desert you should drink lots of water, and wear a hat. Also make great big signs out of white rocks that say “Lost. Help. Will work for Rescue,” etc. Training like that can save lives. Revealing more might put the lives of our agents at risk by disclosing too much of that kind of secret stuff. You know, we abide by that old WWll slogan “Loose Lips Make Flappy Sounds in the Wind”. One small slip of the tongue might cause the loss of an agent, but if you have a desire to know more about our clandestine methods just Google whatever pops into your head and an answer will appear. It works for us.

Well there you have it readers, another exclusive expose brought to you by our diligent, but crack investigative team here at IRK, where the normal is just a little different, bringing you news you don’t get elsewhere. Watch for updates on this shocking, shameful development. I know I will.