The other day we hit the road a bit later than we should
have and made our way to Ringing Rocks Park.
The drive was tedious in that it has a million lights and on this Sunday
collected every last driver lulled into lackadaisical driving by the complexities
of communion wine and heavy scripture. We
made it, but were forced to dip into the picnic lunch rather than risk mutiny
for the 90 minute drive. This place is a
boys dream. It’s a boulder field filled
with rocks generally about the size of a large suitcase….. larger rocks formed
island like features, smaller ones kind of fill in the nooks and crannies. You
can’t see the soil underneath the rocks at all.
As soon as you leave your seat you can see rocks with hemispherical divots
carved out of them…products of countless visitors hitting the rock looking for a
ring. You have a short walk from the
parking lot to the field, you know you’ re getting close as the ringing gets
louder….the divots on each stone mark the trail.
It’s not often a boy is given a hammer and told to hit
whatever he likes. My sons eyes gleamed,
and they tentatively tapped rocks and lumbered across the field. You could tell the good ringers from the bad,
the good ones had the larger divot. The
boulders are a type of diabase granite with high iron and tin content so when
you hit them they give off a distinctly pleasing “ding”. Depending on the bounder’s
size and how it lies, each bounder has a different tone.
The best way to navigate a field like this is speed….you
kind of walk quickly across the tops of the bounders rather than climb up over
and down each one. Think Qubert or maybe
Mario brothers. The faster you go the
more stable you are and the less likely it is for a stone to turn under you.
Its counter intuitive until you see it done…..so it makes sense that the boys
were slow and thorough under their mothers gaze ….tap tap, ring ring and a slow
scramble. I however, knew better and
bounced out to mid field, gracefully hitting the tops of the rocks. My wife did
the same and joined me. My sons were
shocked, mom and dad running on rocks!?! The boys realized that they were the
slow ones, which to a boy is unacceptable, so they tried to emulate our rock
bouncing.
Here is where it gets interesting. In moments we watched the boys evolve from
slow safe rock scramblers, to rock bouncing hammer wielding daredevils. I was
pleased until I recognized that my wife wasn’t nearly as content as I expected….watching
her precious boys run over rocks with little concern for how little spring
diabase has when impacted by a head wasn’t quite what she bargained for….. And
then it happened.
“Mom watch me jump!” Horror to a moms ears, no mom really
wants to watch this, turning her head she saw the boy leap a good 5 feet from
one the “island” boulders onto the next” island” bounder. He made it, no blood or snapping of bone. If you have sons you know what happened next,
each boy vying for our attention as they attempted jump after jump. We watched….and watched, eventually they
tired of jumping and we heard, “Ok I’ll race you to mom and Dad” and it was
on. Two boys running over the tops of
bounders, hammers in hand, bouncing, leaping into each other…..for no good
reason except they were boys and the boulders were there. They were loving life. For the parents, it was a moment of pridefull
terror. For the boys, few large bruises and a scrape or two but nothing severe
enough to stop the subsequent races.
If the challenge is there, and there is some way to make it
a competition, boys will do it. Like it
or not it’s gonna happen…. so now finally I understand NASCAR.
