17. The Man in the Rock
My wife always drives. She is a much more attentive driver than I am, which is important when you are traveling on narrow mountain roads on a tropical island. It is also relevant when you are with a man who is more interested in how the light is falling on an almond tree in the ravine off to the left of the road than the car that is coming around the next bend.
My wife and I rarely disagree. More than a half century of connubial bliss (did I say that?) tends to wear down one’s rough edges and turn even the most jagged personalities into smooth stones. But in every relationship there must be rules and her rules include: “If we go, I drive. If I drive, you do not demand that I stop the car in the middle of the road to take photos. If you jump out of the car, you do not cross the road without making sure a car is not coming. If you cross the road, you do not climb a tree or leap up onto a rock to get a better shot. You are no teenager.”
Naturally I sometimes disobey. If you see my photos, I think you will agree that capturing the right angle in the right light at the right moment is more important than following rules. She has broken a few rules herself, like the time she put her SUV into four-wheel drive and drove me to the top of the highest mountain in eastern Puerto Rico… on a private one lane gravel road… in the rain… in the rainforest. The photos were worth it and we still laugh about our encounter with the forest rangers.
On another day we decided to cross the eastern mountains of the island on a series of narrow roads that had been neglected for years after a modern expressway replaced them. The goal was to reach a restaurant dramatically named Mar de la Tranquilidad (The Sea of Tranquility) on the Caribbean Sea for a late lunch and return on the expressway in time for dinner.
An extended stop at an insanely photogenic state forest on the way put us seriously behind schedule. We were hungry and my usually patient wife was unusually quiet. I promised I would not ask her to stop again.
Until we saw it. The man in the rock. A huge boulder was in the middle of the road and on it was the face of a man. The sculptor had carved it in an angular, modern style, and nature had painted it with copper-colored moss. It was remarkable. It was literally in the middle of the road (the road straddled it) and in the middle of nowhere. There were no houses, no structures of any kind within miles. There was no town nearby, nothing. It was as if a work of art had been dropped out of the sky for the benefit of birds and tree frogs — and the occasional photographer.
Without a word my wife pulled off the road, turned off the motor, and smiled. I promised not to cross the road without making sure a car was not coming or climb up the rock to get a better angle (although I considered it).
I knew that she knew that when you run into a man in a rock, you’ve got to stop.
