Nuts.

I found this stone in the water, as I was testing for turtles and fish.

I picked it up to show Burger, pretending that I had found a fish.

Then I set it down, right on the ledge and it stuck.

So I left it there.

But it was driving Burger nuts that it was no longer in the water.

Fully submerged or something.

He kept saying that it was going to die

and this got me thinking about stones and rocks

and a thing I heard one time about them.

A theory that went something like this:

Rocks and stones are alive, just like us, but they have been around for so long, 

and we have been around for so little that to us they seem inert 

and to them we are but a tiny blip, a fraction of a second.

Basically we are oblivious to each others feelings.

But this stone and this burger were connected somehow

and I had upset the balance.

And so for the duration of our camping trip Burger kept asking about that 

stone, and when were we going to go put it back under water?

Mind you we rode an actual, real live train.

We also saw a real live black bear.

...

So this morning before we left, we got up early and headed over 

and he walked out all confident and focused and knocked the stone over.

 There was a little splash and then a huge sigh of relief

as if he had just finished grad school,

or single handedly saved the whales.

The walk back to camp was upbeat yet silent.

It was a good trip.