An Avalanche of Days

[start of quote] Then the tree actually did begin to shake. It whipped forward and back once, then splintered into pieces as the biggest avalanche in a hundred years roared down the side of Princess Margaret Mountain and smashed everything in its path.
Far uip on the mountain, on a cliff overlooking a particularly steep gully, a stone had fallen. It was a chunk about the size of a raven. When it plopped into the gully it sent a small force out into the surrounding snow. There was enormous power in that snow. Each flake was a crystal of latent energy, one among billions, poling up day after day, covering the slopes, filling the gullies, getting heavy, getting ready … As the stone hit, the interlocking flakes – just barely touching each other, all prickly and uncomfortable – started to slide.
The avalanche was small at first, quietly carrying the stone slowly down a single gully. But the slide began to move faster, as more and more snowflakes fell into step, until the gully was wall-to-wall with churning whiteness, snaking through the narrow places and flinging itself into the air as it bounced around the corners.
The slide overflowed the gully. Cracks ripped across the slopes on either side as the snowpack collapsed there, too. A gigantic slab comes as it broke loose, a mountainside of snow moving faster, so strong that when the blast hit the trees they snapped off. The snow carried the shattered wood and limbs and branches and needles farther, down and down with a noise like thunder …
The last of the slide reached the flats and stopped. A sprinkling of conifer needles settled over the huge heap. There, sitting on the surface, was the stone that had started it all.
The stone came to rest directly over Carrot Creek. In the spring it would melt out of the avalanche debris and drop into the stream, where it would be tugged, tumbled and rolled for centuries toward the Bow River, then on to the Saskatchewan River, the Nelson River and eventually the slat waster of Hudson Bay. “Gee,” the rock said to another stone, lying beside it in the snow, “the system works!” [end of quote]

This quote was taken from pages 143-144, of the novel “Raven’s End” by Ben Gadd. The passage was a bit out of character for the book, as it was the first time Gadd gave an inanimate object a voice. It was a kind of segue of sorts from the story line, a soliloquy. Maybe that’s why it stood out in my mind. Maybe he had written this passage as a poem, and just wanted to publish it somewhere, so he placed it in this story. I take this as a mini-story within the larger one, and I think it is worth quoting. The entire book is a wonderful read.

For me, this quote provides a good example of an avalanche of days. If you perform actions on one day, and repeat them for hundreds of days, with the end in mind of achieving a specific goal, those days will add up. Your action will become your habit, and your habit will become your character. Then all it will take is one symbolic stone, and when it drops all of everything you have worked so hard to achieve will finally be set in motion. Just as the stone did, you will finally see that everything really works. Sigh, I hope I can build up good habits, while I wait for my stone one day to drop!