Last week I had to make a last minute trip to the Texas Hill Country. The short version is I left right after the height of rush hour for a 2.5 hour drive to hand papers to an angry person and leave. Seriously. That was the whole purpose of the trip. To put an envelope in someone’s hand instead of them waiting for the law office to open (which would have meant their getting it nearly 30 minutes earlier than I could deliver it, but let’s not get into some kind of logic on this). Needless to say, it was frustrating. Add dealing with someone who found it easier to be angry than reasonable, and my cortisol level was running high.
So here I am in the Hill Country, and it is around 11:30. The paper had been delivered. The 3-minute “meeting” was tense, and I have to drive 2.5 hours home. Now, common sense says you grab fast food, fill up the gas tank, and head back north to avoid the traffic going through Fort Worth. I tend to adhere to common sense.
Except when there are dinosaurs.
Instead of heading home, I headed to Dinosaur Valley State Park. When my kids were little, we visited often, but I haven’t been there in around 13 years. Still, I remember the joy of splashing in the river and the wonder of the dinosaur tracks, and I was in deep need of both.
So I set my GPS, and off I went.
Despite the recent rains, the water level was low, which was perfect for viewing tracks and wading. There is a bridge made with rocks you can use to cross the river to reach the main track site, which I used. Then, like so many times before, I stood and gazed at the massive footprints in the small pool of water front of me and tried to imagine the dinosaurs that roamed here and what they were doing the day their feet sank deep and these footprints stayed. I don’t know how long I stood there. Until sweat began to trickle down my temple, and I wiped it away a few times.
I could have walked the bridge back to the other side and gotten in my truck dry, but some days are made for wading in pristine water, and this was one of those days, so I did.
I stepped off the smooth edge into the chilly moving water, and let it soak into my tennis shoes and cuffs of my jeans. Then I started walking, some steps deeper, some rocks more slippery, every breath a bit easier. Until I found it.
The perfect rock.
Right in the middle of the river, and big enough for me to lie on. And I did.
I covered my face with my hat, laid my phone beside me, and lay on the rock. I listened to the water gurgle and thought of lizards that lie on rocks and sun themselves and understood, those lizards are seriously onto something.
I lay there like a lizard listening to the water gurgle around me, thinking about how good the sun felt, how good everything in that moment felt, and I simply breathed. Then suddenly, I breathed in so deep my abdomen filled and my chest rose, and I exhaled with a deep sigh that my body sank into, and all the tightness seeped from my body, slid off the rock into the water, and gurgled away.
Then I lay there some more.
Because the most wonderful part of slowing down isn’t always what you see. Sometimes it is what you feel.
And lying on that rock in the middle of that gurgling river indeed felt wonderful.
Those lizards are definitely onto something.