Everything Happening Now

I've been thinking about time.

For two weeks I lived alone in a tiny village in Spain.  I did not speak Spanish, and it was COVID.  The locals were friendly from behind their masks, but there was not much chance of any human connection. 
 
So, every day I went walking.  I packed up a loaf of bread from the town bakery, some salami and cheese and wandered for most of the day.  I walked into tiny towns whose only inhabitants were stray cats, I wandered washed out gravel roads, and foot paths into pine forest dotted with orange and almond groves.  I walked all day and I rarely saw a single soul.
 
One day, I was exploring a dry river valley when I stopped to take in the view.  Some whisper of intuition told me to stop and look longer.  And then I saw it, a tiny stone cottage, the same color as the earth. 
 
I picked my way over to it, and looked in.  There was just enough space inside for one person to sit.  The ground was damp, so I pulled at a large flat stone that had fallen from the roof, leaning against the wall.  Behind it, I found a wonder.

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 It was a clay drinking jug, very old, broken where the stone had struck it, falling.  I sat there staring , then opened my water bottle and took a drink.   

I felt them there with me.  The ones who had sat here so long ago.  They had come in out of the wind and the rain to take a drink and watch their sheep.  They had looked out on this valley.  Like me, they had come alone. ​

My heart swelled with something great and unknowable.  Time stretched like an elastic band and broke.  
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Before I left, I leaned the stone against the wall, leaving the treasure hidden, for another traveler to find.   On that day, I will be with them.   I will be sitting there still.  

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