From the Recesses – An East Facing Rock

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Back when I was a teenager one of my favorite words was “cosmic.” It’s kind of embarrassing now, but I’m sure you had your own silly colloquialisms, so no harm done. I remember many “cosmic” moments in the adolescent years: like when Craig and I wandered up to Grand Boulevard and were hammered to the quick by a thought that strikes everyone at one time or another, normally when you’re 16 and a little bit high.

“Hey, when you look at blue and I look at blue, how can we know if we’re seeing the same thing?”

“Well, because… um… yeah, wow. That’s cosmic.”

“Wait, how would you describe red, like, if you couldn’t call it red?”

“It’s hot. Blue’s cold. But still… you could be seeing what I’d call green or purple and still say that. To really know I’d have to be inside your head. Or you’d have to be inside mine.”

“Man, that’s cosmic.”

Or then there was the time that Kathy — after holding a long hit of Leroy St. Purple — exhaled and said, “Infinity is… Incredible.”

At which we all weed-giggled, then conceded it was, in fact, “Cosmic, Kathy. Cosmic.”

Or then there was her observation one summer day at The Reservoir when she declared that “the only way this could be better would be if it were spring time and we were cutting school.”

We laughed at Kathy a bit then, too, but had to accept that, to the very grain, her observation was “cosmically true.”

And, you know what? Those moments were cosmic. They were times, however hokey in memory, when the brain took a leap beyond where it was to where it could be, even if it occasionally crashed down into the shark tank like Fonzie with a bad carburetor. Those were the moments when the mind broke out of the linear nature school tried to inflict upon us. And while I feel a bit foolish to remember once being that Cosmic Kid, I have to admit that those experiences were far more central in creating my character than entire years of CliffsNotes, chemistry class or calculus.

But the one early cosmic realization that stands out above all others happened years before I had ever heard of Kathy or Craig or smoked any chronic.

In the summer of 1979 I went on a weeklong canoe trip with my brother, Jay, and his Boy Scout troop on the Saranac Lake Chain in the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York. We were four nights into the trip and our Scout Master, Paul LeBlanc, had just whipped together a dinner that I’ll always remember as one of the best of my life. He called it Wheat-a-Moo Stew and it had it all – both wheat and moo. It was spicy. It was filling. It was shared around a campfire with my closest friends, and most importantly for a 12-year-old boy, it possessed the essential attribute for culinary perfection: the prodigious production of late-night, tent-bound farts.

After dinner, and before the poison-gas wars were to commence, the Patrol Leaders told some of the younger kids under their charge to police the campsite for any garbage that had been dropped and others to search for fallen wood to fuel the fire for the night. I wasn’t officially in the troop as I was a year too young, so having no Patrol and being a bit of a turd, I decided to sneak away and avoid any unwanted chores.

Like an Iroquois of my imagination, I crept out of camp and stalked the 100 yards from our campsite down to the water’s edge, trying to avoid stepping on twigs that might snap or breaking branches on trees that could give away my position. At the edge of the island, I found a big, flat east-facing rock. It angled towards the shore and away from my troop. I settled in, out of sight from Mr. LeBlanc, my brother and everyone on the island. Feeling satisfied with my successful escape from work, I kicked out my legs, scraped up some moss for a pillow, laced my fingers behind my head and lay down.

And then it happened.

I saw, right there in front of my eyes, the moon rise for the first time. Of course I’d seen the moon before. I’d seen it risen. But never had I actually watched it climb. I had never seen anything like it. Never had I witnessed a beauty sing itself into existence. And from the first note, the first glimpse of its white crown, I was stunned, enthralled. It moved perceptibly, it didn’t hesitate a second. For an hour or more I watched it rise, arc-second by arc-second above the High Peaks, not daring to wiggle a finger for fear of unsettling its progress. There was something about the near perfect stillness around me — just the water washing the shore, just the crickets’ legs and bats’ wings — that further illuminated the magic inherent in the moment.

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