Faces of Long Ago

by
Gary Galleher
(with Rick Brown)

I remember camping with my older sister and father in Canada one summer while in my early teens. We were camping on the north shore of Lake Huron at the end of a rain soaked week. The rain had stopped and a heavy mist hung about the place like a shroud. The tent was very close in the damp afternoon, so I set out for the lake with a belt ax on my hip.
    
The sand stretched for miles along the shore, and my walking carried me away from our camp to a deserted place in view of a pine-covered island. The island was a source of timber, and a few of the stray logs had floated to the shore where I stood. I knew it must be a Sunday because there were no log boats running and no sound of saws or crackling timber. The sounds remaining were those older than mankind. The wind whistled in my ears, and the endless rows of waves made lapping sounds at the shoreline.
    
I wondered at these raw elements, envisioned them molded into a cathedral where some native worshipped long, long ago. I came out of the thought and sank my ax into the end of a log that was floating in the water nearby. I dragged the log onto the beach and began to rhythmically chop at the wood with my hatchet. The sound of my chopping realized was also ancient and somehow took me away from any specific time or place.
    
Soon, almond shaped eyes slanted down from a stern brow, and a tragic mouth gaped in horror at its creator. Another face was cut under the first, and then another under that. I stepped back to look at my impulse and was pleased with the crude totem. I dug a hole in the sand and faced it toward where it had come, its previous home.
    
One log didn’t fill my desire. I dragged another log and chopped new faces, thinking that these more expressive than my first. Collectively, as if a tribe, these too gazed at their island birthplace.  I fashioned one final pole, then planted it in the sand with the first two. The time had passed without notice. I finished by naming the sentinels Wind, Waves, and Sand. I again faced the island, thinking that little had changed in this place for hundreds of years …

… as I walked away feeling very small.