Rocks Rule

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lover of writing. He lives under a rock in the Polish Jurassic Highland, but sometimes he travels far away.

We think we can conquer them, but in fact, they dominate us. They bring us into a state of natural, blissful balance. They imbue us with energy—the smaller ones briefly, the giant ones for weeks at a time.

I can already see them coming. With license plates from Silesia and Warsaw, flocking to this epicenter of Lesser Poland. They leave their cars by the roadside, because there are no parking lots near the rocks, and they head skyward. They’re starting the season earlier than me, again. I can see them from the window of my house overlooking the limestone cliff. Ever since I’ve been looking at it, I can’t shake the feeling that it’s already in the future—which, after all, will take the same form. Anyway, the problem with rocks has been going on for centuries. People either admire them, or wonder why God created them in the first place.

Rather than readying my harness, I look out the window and philosophize.

On a Human Scale

The locals are impeded by the rocks in the fields. I have often admired the precision with which the tractor drivers maneuver the plow to get as close to the cliff edge as possible, not to waste the land. It’s a wonderful sight in spring: silvery clods poking up from the black slush after the snow thaws, dripping with water. On the whole, though, the land is deemed barren. Nothing edible will grow there, perhaps with the exception of hawthorn or wild rose. But who harvests those in the countryside nowadays? City folk on an excursion, maybe. In karst landscapes, monadnocks can’t be missed—they’re hardly inconspicuous. They shine in the sun like precious metal. Cobalt in winter. Chalky in autumn, among

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Andrzej Muszyński:

lover of writing. He lives under a rock in the Polish Jurassic Highland, but sometimes he travels far away.

Translation: Kate Webster

Publish date: 17.03.2023

Also read:

Klaudia Khan:

A writer, a humanitarian worker, previously a teacher, always a student. She lives mostly in Poland and Pakistan. She writes mostly about people (those connected to land, and those who are displaced) and planet (including lessons learnt from interactions with non-human persons).

The mountains of Pakistan’s Gilgit-Baltisan region give way to exquisite beauty – as well as villages where water is in scarce supply. Unperturbed, the inhabitants of such villages have devised a novel way to provide water for their communities: through the craft of glacier grafting.

In the high-altitude region of Gilgit-Baltistan – also known as Little Tibet and formerly as the Northern Areas in Pakistan – people have learnt to adapt to the harsh local conditions. The picturesque valleys guarded by the majestic Himalayas, the extreme Karakorum and the unforgiving Hindu Kush are now accessible by the Karakorum Highway. Yet for centuries they were cut off for much of the year, meaning that local people had to learn to be self-sustainable and deal with their problems – such as water scarcity – on their own. Their villages might have been out of reach, but they were not left alone – well, this happens when you live on imperial borderlands. According to legend, when the people of Baltistan learnt of the Mongol army advancing towards them from the north in the early 13th century, they came up with an ingenious way to stop them. As the inhabited valleys were only accessible through narrow passes, they decided to block the entry way by building a glacier. This successfully prevented the Mongol invasion and, crucially, it also solved the locals’ other big problem: water scarcity.

On a Human Scale

Also read:

A Marriage of Glaciers

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