At last, it happened. I have finally found a Twin Peaks reference I can appreciate. For 20 years, the appeal of the Twin Peaks phenomenon had completely escaped me. But on Sunday, that changed.
On Sunday, I stumbled across the Tibetan Rock Throwing event at the Festival at Mount Si. I say stumbled because it was a little way from the center of festival activity, and I was on my way to the petting zoo. I never made it to the petting zoo.
The physical game consisted of chalk lines drawn on a grassy field with, on one end, a box of rocks. On the other end, a glass bottle sat on top of a plastic bucket, on top of a white tarp.
The point, ostensibly, was to smash the bottle with a rock, but I suspect that, like the show that inspired it, the game had layers.
The handful of adults and children I watched make the attempt — it’s harder than it sounds — all seemed to have their own reasons for playing, anyway.
Organizer Mary Hutter explained that she based the game on a problem-solving technique demonstrated in the show: Ask a question, throw the rock, and if the bottle breaks, your answer is positive.
Now I don’t actually believe that rock throwing is a real practice of Tibetan monks, but I liked the peacefulness of the game. I could even allow that it was meditative.
It was a lot like one of my favorite events of Railroad Days, the model train displays at the American Legion Post on River Street. There, people quietly, sometimes silently, share something that is important to them, in a space a little way from the center of festival activity.
The model trains are fun to watch, and so are the reactions of people, especially children, when they see the trains running through tiny mountains and towns. I’m not a model railroader, but I don’t have to be to appreciate this element of Railroad Days.
The point, ostensibly, is just to see the trains, and to appreciate them.
It’s been a happily hectic summer for me, personally, so I’m really glad we have these built-in resting places in the middle of all our fun but frenzied festivals. Like Twin Peaks, their usefulness and appeal may not always have been obvious to me, but I can definitely appreciate it now.
