Relaxation with Rocks

Haley May calls her massage business May Massage Arts, an apt name, as Haley, like any artist, is creative with the materials of her art. Like a sculptor with clay, she molds the muscles of the body into the shapes she envisions for them – stretched long, rounded smooth. I am the clay she is molding into shape, and because she is an artist, I feel my body perfected in the shape it is. Like a painter or composer – or a poet or novelist or any artist – she pays attention to details: this pinpoint spot needs extra pressure, this touch of hardness that cracks under her hands needs to be gentled into smoothness.

Last week when I came into the studio for a massage, Haley showed me a tray of steaming water in which lay a dozen or so smooth round rocks: black ones, dark red ones, striped gray ones, most just the size to fit into her palm, though four or five were small enough to fit into the circle made by a finger and thumb. Some had blunted points. Some were slightly textured with pimpled surfaces. The hot water stirred over them like a creek running over rocks. I was entranced, as when watching the moving water of a creek or river.

Haley left the room. I undressed, lay face-down on the massage table, pulled the blanket over me, and called to Haley that I was ready. 

      She began as usual, massaging my back. Then, with hardly an interruption, moving as smoothly as a dancer, she picked up two rocks from their hot-water bath and rubbed them rhythmically, one in each hand, over my back. Their heat sank into my body. Haley turned a rock’s blunted point to go more deeply into a stubborn muscle. The hot rocks (“Are they too hot?” “No, they’re perfect”) slid smoothly over my massage-oiled skin. They were of both earth and water, and they brought me into their essence. As their heat flowed into my body, I became the water flowing over the rocks. At the same time the water was flowing over me: Haley’s hands moving with the constant yet ever-changing motion of the river, the creek, the stream, the tides. I was underwater; I was water itself; I was immersed in smooth, warm, earth-born, water-rocks waving and rippling over muscle and skin.

Haley slid the warm rocks she had been using on my back into the palms of my hands, where they rested like eggs with life inside them. My hands curled slightly over them, like a bird settling her breast over her brood.

The rocks drove their heat deep into my muscles as Haley slid them over my arms and legs, uncovering, then covering again, each limb in turn. Like ripples of soprano notes, the small rocks in her hands danced over my cheeks, around my eyes and lips, until my face sank into the deeper registers.

Finally Haley returned the rocks to their hot-water bath. She massaged my feet, wrapped them in warm damp towels, rubbed them dry, and drew the covers over them. “All right, Diana,” she said quietly, always the signal of the end of the massage. “Take your time getting up,” and she left the room.

It took a while to draw myself up from the underwater currents, but eventually I sat up, dressed, gave Haley a hug, and floated to my car. Then I drove to Ashland for a yoga class.

I have never done a better yoga.

Walk, Don't Ski

            Skiing with the Grants Pass Nordic Club at Mt. Bachelor, in the central Oregon Cascades, last week was, more accurately, "skiing." The "snow" in the picture below 

is, more accurately, such hard-packed ice that we took our skis off and walked the downhill stretches. Everyone stepped very carefully down to and across a snow-bridge over a creek.

I am crossing the bridge.

Every one of the thirteen skiers fell at one time or another. Even the very best skiers went down. I fell three times. We weren’t falling into soft powder, either.

            It was beautiful, though, with a marbled blue-and-white sky and creeks winter-black against the white fields. Todd Lake, where we stood on our skis to eat lunch, lay icy-white under the snowy peaks of Broken Top Mountain.    

Winter-hungry birds landed on our heads, hoping for hand-outs. 

On our way back to the cars, Mt. Bachelor’s hard-ice slopes glistened like glazed ceramics in the afternoon sun.

            Nonetheless, the next day we eschewed skiing in favor of hiking. Even Misery Ridge, at Smith Rock, sounded better than Misery Ski.

          Unfortunately, I hadn’t brought hiking boots with me (I had thought I would be skiing), so I had to hike in my dress shoes. As I climbed up the steep trail (remember its name?), someone coming down said, “Cute shoes. I’m not sure they’re good for hiking, but they’re cute.”

  I was as much concerned about ruining my shoes as about misery hiking. I remembered being caught in the same situation when I was twenty and made an excursion to Mt. Aetna from Aix-en-Provence, France, where I was a student. I didn’t know till I got to the mountain that it was possible to hike up an active volcano, but, as at Smith Rock, the desire to hike outweighed concern about shoes. By the end of the hike, the lava-rock trail had shredded my dressy sandals into ruins. 

            I was walking over easier ground at Smith Rock, but I did take my shoes off in the sandier places by the river to walk barefooted for a while. That helped save my shoes, if not my feet.

           Smith Rock is famous for its rock climbing routes. From any place on the trail we could see rock climbers clambering up sheer rock faces, looking like spiders with limbs splayed out against the walls. Occasionally we saw a climber hanging on a rope, swaying slightly, like a spider dangling on its thread. 

At Monkey Face, the silhouette of rock climbers against sky and above desert suggested the extent of their feat.

As though the hike itself wouldn't be its own reward (and breath taking, in the most literal sense), the view from the top was the other kind of breathtaking.

Mike Kohn with me on top of Smith Rock

On the descent we had stupendous views of the line-up of snow-capped Cascade peaks: Mt. Bachelor, the Three Sisters, Three-finger Jack, Broken Top, Mt. Jefferson. 

Mt. Jefferson with other, lesser, peaks

            If the skiing had been a bust, the hiking was great. And when we weren't outdoors, we enjoyed each other's company at the house we were renting in Sun River. We ate well, preparing a Mexican meal one night, Italian the next. We watched the opening ceremonies for the Olympics and some of the ice skating and skiing events. And now, when I think about it again, I think maybe even the ”skiing” was fun.