Moving Rocks

A couple of times in the last month I’ve been diverging water in rocky streambeds and wanted to move a rock that is deeply buried in the gravel/sand/silt. No matter how hard I try to pull the rock out, it hardly moves. I feel the soft yet firm cling of suction holding the rock within its moist matrix. But if I exert only enough energy to create that initial, almost imperceptible, “hardly moves” and simply hold the rock in that position long enough for percolating water to fill in the gap and remove the suction, then I can move the rock a bit again. Hold it. Wait. Pull it back the other direction. Slowly wiggling the rock back and forth grows easier and the rock rises out of the streambed. It became a fun challenge to see how many of the seemingly immovable rocks I encounter can actually be moved. A nice kinesthetic encounter with how several small moves can accumulate into more effectiveness than striving for one large move.