Sometimes, you dig a hole and find a rock as big as a house. If you dig a hole in Montauk, it is almost certain. The Ice Age was over and the glacier fled north to the arctic circle, leaving behind a trail of boulders in the sand. Later, fishermen came and built a town on the rocks sticking out into the Atlantic like a fish’s tail.
So when the giant excavator stomped into our backyard like a Tyrannosaurus Rex and chomped a hole in our perfect green lawn, the dig for the new pool, I was not surprised when it pulled out, locked in its steel jaws, a brown rock nine feet tall and ten feet wide, as big as a house. And I realized this is what I wanted all along, not a rectangle of blue water for laughing grandchildren and parties on the 4th of July, but a rock all my own, big enough to climb clumsily,
a spot for me above the blur, to dwell on top of this stone colossus, arms spread wide, legs akimbo, unabashedly in the noon sun, alone except for a midday breeze and one yellow buzzing bee.
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