The Writing on the Wall; or, how to live forever, sorta

Spring break demands adventure. So yesterday, the husband and I took our teenage son Jonah and his friend, Matthew, to check out some rocks an hour north of us.

(That ain't the kind of spring break revelry some envision, I grant you. But, hey. We’re a couple of middle-aged parents with a mortgage and knees that are starting to creak when we stand up. For us, looking at rocks is pretty good.)

I first heard of the Ledges in Grand Ledge from a woman who cut my hair last spring. I was looking for cool places to explore near our new home in Jackson. The Ledges ― I’m not sure if that's their official name or just what everyone calls them ― might be a good option, Kat suggested, snipping in the general vicinity of my head.

All summer I thought the next weekend might be the right time to give Kat’s suggestion a try, but months came and went and we never got around to it. Fall filled quickly, with its cross country meets and marching band extravaganzas, then winter with more running and drumming and busyness. 

When spring break rolled around and Jonah announced he and Matthew planned to go hiking, I was happy for them. When they invited us old folks to come along, I was even happier and suggested we finally make our Ledges outing happen.

We took the back roads, parents in front, singing along to bad 80s songs on the radio and talking about summer vacation plans, young people in the back, talking about whatever young people talk about. I was eager to get where we were going, having waited so long to see this place that looked so enticing in Google Maps photos, but the drive was a peaceful kind of slow, and good.

You can access the Ledges via an east trailhead or a west trailhead, but I’d been told the better option was to skip the -heads altogether and park on the north side of the Grand River, in Oak Park. We expected something more official-looking than the gravel parking lot and muddy grass spreading under a few trees, but when we trudged to the edge of the park and looked down, we knew we had hit the jackpot.

The Ledges is a misnomer, in my opinion. The striking feature of that part of the river is not ledges but cliffs. Vertical, thick, in some places shockingly smooth, in others bumpy and gnarled and creviced, the sandstone walls fall away from your feet as you stand on the top and rise enticingly above your head once you follow a treacherous set of steps to their bottom.

White scratch marks scaling the otherwise yellow-gray walls showed where professional climbers worked their Spider-Man magic and where climbing instructors, on sunnier days, urged novices to keep going. The cliffs aren’t extravagantly high ― in some spots, if the husband stood on my shoulders and our son stood on him, Jonah could have peeked over the top, except that by then I’d be sprawled on the ground like a four-limbed pancake.

On the ground nearby lay giant slabs of rock that had broken off of the cliffs years ago, landing with a thud I could still feel in my chest as I climbed on top of them.

Rivulets of water excused themselves as they trickled between our feet, easing their way out of some mysterious place in the cliffs in tiny, mossy waterfalls you had to bend over to examine closely. Under an especially bulky overhang, a portion of rock right at the base had worn away, crawling some 15 feet under the cliff until it formed a small cave where leftover firewood made my imagination boil with thoughts of dark nights and coyote howls and adventure.

Here and there, where the wall was smooth and had large expanses of bare space, hikers and climbers and other passers-by had scratched letters and words into the gritty surface of the rock. Names, sentences, illegible words and collections of letters, even a giant mermaid gave evidence that someone had been there, had marveled at the same cliffs, bent down to look at the same little waterfalls, imagined themselves in the same fire-lit cave.

One inscription, the only one I saw with a date, read “1931.” A time not that long ago, in the grand scheme of things, but it felt old as I traced the numbers with my fingertips, wondering what the person who carved it was like, what they worried about, what they dreamed of, who they loved.

On a wall surrounded by other scratchings, a large heart encircled four letters, the lovers’ declaration frozen in time: “SB+SH.” I wondered if S and S still loved each other, or if they regretted that cliff carving, regretted that they had once believed love lasts forever.

The pocketknife I didn’t have with me itched in my pocket. I looked at the walls and the letters and the river and the people there with me and I wanted to make a mark that said I was there. A mark that said, in some tiny way, I exist, I see, I feel, I love. I am not nothing. I have stood next to this wall and smacked it with my hand and laid my cheek upon it and somehow that makes me real, a part of this world even though I am infinitely small and infinitely meaningless as the water keeps flowing and the wall keeps crumbling and people keep falling in love and growing old and turning to dust.

Leaning on the wall, its thickness blocking the wind that had made me pull my jacket tight when I was up at the top, I watched my husband take pictures and my son climb a stack of fallen slabs. Soon we would need to knock the mud off our shoes and pick up some subs and head home for track practice. For a moment, though, we were just there, separate but together among the cliffs, quietly being, and listening to geese squabble on the river.

Maybe I didn’t have my name on a rock. But I have made a mark on the world. I have given it my children, and they are the most extraordinary humans I know. I have taken up space, not always doing right by it, but sometimes making something better for someone else. I have loved people and they have loved me back, and I can’t ask for anything of greater or more lasting value than that. Not even if it were scratched on a cliff.

Before we left, I had to duck under a go-no-further cord and clamber over to the imposing leg of a railroad trestle, standing sentry at the edge of the water. It was rusted and crumbly and solid and steel and will last another 100 years, easy. 

One side of the metal was scrawled with more names, more letters from the past written by hands like mine, reaching out to me, connecting, speaking, existing.

I fished in my pocket and pulled out my car key. With its metal tip, I scratched my initials in the battleship-gray paint.

It won’t last forever. The paint will fade and chip away, disappearing into the river.

That’s OK. I’m here now. And I have people I love and work to do and back roads and bad 80s music and cats and a fireplace and maybe tacos for supper. Really, that’s all a person can ask for.

And it’s pretty doggone good.

------------------

If you live in Jackson and need a good haircut, I recommend Kat at FiveOneSeven Salon. But don't tell her I sent you, because I went back to cutting my own hair and she'll be disappointed in me.

If you visit Grand Ledge to see the cliffs and need something to eat afterward, a grinder from Mancino's might take a while to make and not be all that spectacular, but the woman who takes your order is really nice.

If you are having a really bad day, or know someone who is, and need help dealing with it, you can call or text the national suicide and crisis lifeline any time for anonymous help. The number is 988, and they want you to call.