Come back with me to the land of Stony Brook, an enchanted and enchanting place, an island of serenity in an ocean of tension. It is there that I found peace and quiet, freedom to ponder the myriad complexities of Nature or lethargically relax, whichever I chose.
Stony Brook is a small, winding river, maybe twenty feet across, hindered here and there by rocks of varying might. Along its banks of clay and pebbles are woods of depth and mystery, and birds and butterflies frequently sing and flutter through them. And, except for those pleasant sounds and the murmuring and gurgling of the Brook as it broke upon its stones, silence reigned there.
Sometimes, my friends and I would feel like exploring, so we hiked along the stream's edge for miles; sometimes having to leap small tributarial gullies we found in our path, sometimes jumping or skipping over branches or roots belonging to the treelike guardians of Stony Brook, sometimes venturing away from it when our trail clandestinely carried us as it found its way into deeper and darker wood only to deliver us forth at those friendly shores again at an unexpected point further along the water's course.
Winter came as no hindrance; instead it offered us ice, a much more efficient medium with which to pursue our exploration. Now, we need not skirt those obstacles nature had placed along the shoreline path we took -- we could skirt the path itself and continue on a straighter, more direct course to places unknown on the ice which was occasionally our beloved watery guide. Of course we fell through, but that was part of the fun, and the fun was part of our attachment to this land.
I remember that, on one occasion, four of us were resting briefly at a kind of way-station -- a ledge of rock jutting out from the side of a hill on a neck of land that was bordered by the brook -- and I carved my initials into one side of the rock, while the others puffed away on Lucky's or Marlboro's. We traveled on, wading through water, weaving through woods, wondering as we wandered onward what we might uncover and where we would eventually wind up. Well, after uncovering a lovely girl who lived on a neighboring farm reading on a rock in the sunburnt brook and winding up being shot at by her somewhat protective relatives, we began the journey home. Exhilaratedly weary and experiencedly worn we finally gained our way-station again. As I lit up a menthol, I happened to remember my carving, and I looked up to astonishedly find a white cross next to it on the stone facade. I called this to my comrades' attention and they were equally startled.
The mystery symbol left unexplained, we went home.
Too many other occasions arose as wonderful as this one in the Stony Brook area in the days I spent going to school in Princeton for me to remember them all, but I fondly recall those days I sat on a big, flat boulder in the middle of the stream and bathed in the warm sunshine, or read a science-fiction adventure, or just slept, knowing no harm could befall me, nor disturbance upset me, except the inevitable return I must make to school and reality.
It's a shame that there aren't more places in the world like Stony Brook.
