Sometime during last winter, I started getting interested in crystals. I think I always liked rocks and gems, I mean, who doesn’t go through a rock collecting phase when they’re a kid? But for me I was always fascinated by them. Whenever I found myself in a natural history museum, or saw little rock collections in the science section of a toy store, I always went out of my way to look at crystals and rocks. Petrified wood has always been my favorite. I find it fascinating that it used to be a tree, and every part of the tree was replaced with trace minerals over millions of years, yet it still takes on the tree’s shape and texture.
But at the beginning or this year, I took a deep dive into the metaphysical properties of crystals. I started a collection, mostly bought from a little hippie store a few miles from my house. It’s funny how you start with a curiosity and end up starting a new hobby. I started researching types of gems and crystals. I started following social media groups showing and selling specimens and jewelry. I can now identify quite a handful. And some I can even tell you what Chakras they relate to and how they are supposed to heal you…if you believe in that sort of thing.
Before leaving for Enchanted Rock, I learned about a type of mineral called a Prophecy Stone. It’s black and uniquely shaped. It looks like an explosion suddenly frozen and turned to stone, the colors of fire extinguished, leaving nothing but the black carbon in a little burst.
I had to have one. Not only do they look cool, but apparently they have strong metaphysical properties that relate to your third eye. People rant about them all over the internet. So, I went to the local crystal shop wanting to see if they had any. Of course they did and the owner also offers to make a pendant out of any stone by wrapping it with copper wire. So, as the owner was making a necklace out of my newest gem, a woman who was helping him in the shop said “Oh! A prophecy stone! Those have some strong majik. I remember when I bought mine…” and hummed at some dreamy memory.
I put it on when I started my drive to Enchanted Rock and had it on the whole time I was camping or hiking. I was wearing the stone around my neck when I saw the phantom animals manifest in the 100 degree heat. At that moment I wasn’t thinking of magic, only the fact I had half a mile to get back to my car and no water.
I was dehydrated and hallucinating. Slow and steady back to camp, I thought. If things got worse I would need to take a break under what little shade hung around. But I figured I could make it, maybe.
Around that side of Enchanted rock there appear unique rock formations. Hunks of granite weather different on that side. It’s like they dissolve and the individual crystals in the granite flake off. The rocks seem to dissolve in the middle and four corners of boulders stay upright. So, the side of the Rock is dotted by boulders with 4 pillars, like the legs of an upside down elephant. In my heat-addled state I kept actually thinking they were animals.
I imagined some post-apocalyptic world, where young people would be warned by the elders not to explore the Great Pink Dome. “For there are stairs made by giants and great beasts turned to stone…”
The desert of solid rock, eventually lost out to a tree line. All I could hear was my breathing in the still heat. Everything was still whitewashed, and the nearing trees looked like they were dusted with ash.
But once in the shade, the color returned. I could feel my body cooling just by being out of the sun. A dirt trail appeared on the banks of a dried up creek. I knew I was at the bottom of the Rock, and not too far from the parking lot.
Some people were on the trail, smiling, little kisses of sweat on their shoulders, water bottles still perspiring. I felt a mix of envy and a fear for them. I hoped they wouldn’t get a mild heat stroke.
Eventually I limped to my car, exhausted, filled up a water bottle and mixed in some electrolytes. I got my folding chair and set it up under a tree. There was a water spigot nearby, so I soaked my shirt and a handkerchief. I sat on my folding chair and draped the shirt and rag on my bare chest. I don’t know how long I was there, but I felt like my breathing was louder than normal, and I could hear my blood pumping in my ears. I had a good view of the dome so I sat admiring it drifting in and out of a weak nap.
So, that was the highlight of my trip. After that, I endured the heat in the shade, ate soup out of the can, rested in the shade of a rock at the scenic outlook until sunset. Slept again on the hard ground with my tent door open and the relentless wind keeping me cool-ish but also keeping the bugs away.
Many other small things happened on my trip. I could tell you about the woman with a British accent who sat next to me in the shade on the main dome, or the fit couple who went into the bushes. I could tell you about someone flying a drone at night. I could tell you about the strange man who warned me about wasps, or the other man who had lost his girlfriend. I could tell you about the repeller who fell face first coming down the rock, or the herd of deer I watched climbing up the mountain at sunset. But all those things are small and only for my memories.
A month later, I had moved out of my house. School was over and Summer was just beginning. I was sitting in the backyard of my rental half drunk watching a thunderstorm in the north as the moon hung clear in the west. Red cracks of light silently burst through the dark gray clouds, but over my shoulder was the blue light of the half moon.
I went to Enchanted Rock not to think, not to search for answers, not to ask more questions. I went to find silence in my mind, to not have deadlines or responsibilities. I was thinking by taking the prophecy stone, I would imbued it with…something. But maybe the woman in the gem store was right: maybe there was strong majik already in it. As I sat in my new backyard, watching the thunderstorm, I had no idea the summer that lay ahead of me: one of travel and combat, love and more majik, all that began with a black stone and a misadventure in the Texas Hill Country...
…But that, dear reader, is a tale for another day.
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