The Gazing Stacks

An area of high land where one could chew the fat of the view. The prime spot for spotting an unexpected UFO or the sudden onset of World’s end. A situation and atmosphere inclined towards the sight of strange events, even if no strange events eventually arose. There were always expectations that the unexpected would happen ... seen from there ... felt from there... standing upon and gazing outwards from the Gazing Stacks. Purpose-built for seeing.

Except when I went up there, with any old excuse for short-stay gazing, I stayed for much longer, with the longest sight that my straining eyes could then manage towards the long empty horizon.

Behind me sat the castellated town, behind and below, where the townsfolk could themselves gaze up at any gazers like me upon the high land where I now stood: stack-pillars of natural hillside set conveniently side by side from a previous chance cataclysm that had engulfed the gazers as well as most everybody else.

Any ends of our world affected all of us, gazers and non-gazers alike, with chance cataclysms that often gave chance configurations of a neat land-mass as well as a potentially confused rubble. But today I was determined to sit it out and watch the chance sliding of tectonic plates into whatever chance configurations they slid into ... sit out even my own death when the unexpected came as I fully expected it to do ... today.

Nothing happened at all, of course. Just the usual waiting for nothing to happen. Not a single UFO, not a single earthquake, not even a darkening of the sky with ominous clouds. I mused the time away composing this. I often turned round and gazed down at people in the streets gazing up at me standing, sitting, standing again, sitting again on the Stacks as if they were saying: “There he is gazing into nothing and when you gaze into nothing what do you expect to be repaid: naturally nothing.”

Then came another. A lady gazer. She and I often sat together, without even a shy word to say to each other. The Gazing Stacks are not a place for talk; it’s a place for thought, composing oneself, composing the day, composing the future as one’s eye travels along the never-ending horizon of confused hope or fear.

“It’s cold; it doesn’t look cold.”

I was shocked. She had spoken. To herself? To me? I knew what she meant. The sun was suddenly out bright behind us, behind the town, yet it was icy cold where we were on the sunlit Stacks. I turned to gaze at her face. A lovely face. She smiled. I yearned to reply. But then she vanished behind a sudden unexpected shadow. And I wept. The townsfolk had gone in, too. Everything was still, steady as a rock. Soon it will be dark. Move on. Nothing to see here.