Near the banks of the majestic Virgin River that cuts through the canyon of Utah’s Zion National Park, you can hike up a short, steep trail that brings you to Weeping Rock. It is one of several Hanging Gardens that recall the Hanging Gardens of Babylon as described in ancient sources. Dangling pendulously from the sheer, rain drenched cliffs are rare and beautiful plant species. These hardy florae belong to a group of about forty kinds of vegetation that grow only on the Colorado Plateau, where Zion is located.
National Geographic’s Guide to Zion tells us the following about the falling waters of Weeping Rock: “It takes about a thousand years for rainwater to fall and then slowly percolate through the porous Navajo sandstone. Upon hitting the more impermeable Kayenta siltstone, the water is forced to find an exit, emerging in seeps and springs along the wall of a canyon where these two layers, the sandstone and the siltstone, meet. This is an ideal environment for complex hanging gardens.”
It's also an ideal environment for imagining tears falling profusely from the wet rock face, whether as perpetual trickles or as small waterfalls. I visited Weeping Rock this past year on an otherwise hot, dry, and cloudless Utah desert day. Though I was fascinated by its botany and geology, I was most deeply drawn to its poetry. We don’t usually personify mute inanimate rocks as expressing emotions and shedding tears. Yet, when I stood under the stone alcove at the top of the trail, watching that rainwater streaming down, I couldn’t avoid seeing them doing that.
Watching the rocks weep at Weeping Rock, I thought about a similar striking image from the biblical book of the prophet, Habbakuk. Living in a time of great social unrest among the ancient Israelites, Habbakuk complained bitterly to God about why the righteous suffer, particularly at the hands of wicked people who go unpunished. God responded enigmatically with the firm promise that divine retribution was imminent. In every house built upon a foundation of oppression, even the stones would cry out from the walls in bitter protest. Of course, this portrayal is a metaphor for the weakest, most powerless members of society raising their voices against the abuses inflicted upon them by the powerful. However, when I read these words, I close my eyes and attempt to see what Habbakuk saw. I try to imagine each stone suddenly coming to life in the walls of the house of an evil person. It cries out and expels the accumulated pollutants of oppression that were absorbed into the rock. For the prophet, injustice is so damaging to a community that it poisons even the inanimate, inorganic materials that people use to build their homes.
If Habbakuk’s stones could cry out from their walls, then the cliffs of Weeping Rock can certainly shed tears. The hanging gardens are part of a vast network of exquisite national parks and federal lands. Their pristine beauty and natural health are fiercely protected by the government with the consent of the American people. Yet I fear it is only a matter of time before these oases of environmental conservation are, like everything else, slowly trampled by the relentless march of climate change. In a place like Weeping Rock, I stand quietly. I try to listen to the many stones in the walls of nature’s house – the myriad species of animals, vegetation and minerals – crying out to us, the most powerful, destructive species of them all: “stop oppressing us and yourselves as well.”
Granting every occupant of nature’s great house a voice, the ability to shed tears, or the expression of emotions has a time-honored place in our history of creative expression. Artists both religious and secular have always personified the natural world. This is a possible cultural residue of an earlier time when we were animists who imagined spirits residing in all living things. For our distant ancestors, trees literally clapped their hands in praise to the Creator, rock faces could weep aloud, stones would cry out from walls. As society has developed, nature’s noisy shouts of joy and despair have gradually been drowned out by the white noise of our increasingly industrialized and digitized preoccupations. That white noise demands exceeding amounts of our attention and distraction, thus threatening our ability to hear deeply the flora and fauna residing with us that are slowly dying because of us. What if we resurrected this capacity to listen to the crying voices of our fellow citizens in the community of nature? We wouldn’t need to believe literally that the cliffs of Weeping Rock are calling out in pain or dire warning. We would just need to attune our ears a bit more conscientiously to the sounds of their falling water and imagine those cliffs in tears. We might thereby grow a new sensibility about nature and our place within it. One that forces us to listen to nature more carefully, not simply as a collection of lovely things for our mindless enjoyment, but as a community of beautiful beings with whom we mindfully share this planet that is our home.
Near the banks of the majestic Virgin River that cuts through the canyon of Utah’s Zion National Park, you can hike up a short, steep trail that brings you to Weeping Rock. It is one of several Hanging Gardens that recall the Hanging Gardens of Babylon as described in ancient sources. Dangling pendulously from the sheer, rain drenched cliffs are rare and beautiful plant species. These hardy florae belong to a group of about forty kinds of vegetation that grow only on the Colorado Plateau, where Zion is located.
National Geographic’s Guide to Zion tells us the following about the falling waters of Weeping Rock: “It takes about a thousand years for rainwater to fall and then slowly percolate through the porous Navajo sandstone. Upon hitting the more impermeable Kayenta siltstone, the water is forced to find an exit, emerging in seeps and springs along the wall of a canyon where these two layers, the sandstone and the siltstone, meet. This is an ideal environment for complex hanging gardens.”
It's also an ideal environment for imagining tears falling profusely from the wet rock face, whether as perpetual trickles or as small waterfalls. I visited Weeping Rock this past year on an otherwise hot, dry, and cloudless Utah desert day. Though I was fascinated by its botany and geology, I was most deeply drawn to its poetry. We don’t usually personify mute inanimate rocks as expressing emotions and shedding tears. Yet, when I stood under the stone alcove at the top of the trail, watching that rainwater streaming down, I couldn’t avoid seeing them doing that.
Watching the rocks weep at Weeping Rock, I thought about a similar striking image from the biblical book of the prophet, Habbakuk. Living in a time of great social unrest among the ancient Israelites, Habbakuk complained bitterly to God about why the righteous suffer, particularly at the hands of wicked people who go unpunished. God responded enigmatically with the firm promise that divine retribution was imminent. In every house built upon a foundation of oppression, even the stones would cry out from the walls in bitter protest. Of course, this portrayal is a metaphor for the weakest, most powerless members of society raising their voices against the abuses inflicted upon them by the powerful. However, when I read these words, I close my eyes and attempt to see what Habbakuk saw. I try to imagine each stone suddenly coming to life in the walls of the house of an evil person. It cries out and expels the accumulated pollutants of oppression that were absorbed into the rock. For the prophet, injustice is so damaging to a community that it poisons even the inanimate, inorganic materials that people use to build their homes.
If Habbakuk’s stones could cry out from their walls, then the cliffs of Weeping Rock can certainly shed tears. The hanging gardens are part of a vast network of exquisite national parks and federal lands. Their pristine beauty and natural health are fiercely protected by the government with the consent of the American people. Yet I fear it is only a matter of time before these oases of environmental conservation are, like everything else, slowly trampled by the relentless march of climate change. In a place like Weeping Rock, I stand quietly. I try to listen to the many stones in the walls of nature’s house – the myriad species of animals, vegetation and minerals – crying out to us, the most powerful, destructive species of them all: “stop oppressing us and yourselves as well.”
Granting every occupant of nature’s great house a voice, the ability to shed tears, or the expression of emotions has a time-honored place in our history of creative expression. Artists both religious and secular have always personified the natural world. This is a possible cultural residue of an earlier time when we were animists who imagined spirits residing in all living things. For our distant ancestors, trees literally clapped their hands in praise to the Creator, rock faces could weep aloud, stones would cry out from walls. As society has developed, nature’s noisy shouts of joy and despair have gradually been drowned out by the white noise of our increasingly industrialized and digitized preoccupations. That white noise demands exceeding amounts of our attention and distraction, thus threatening our ability to hear deeply the flora and fauna residing with us that are slowly dying because of us. What if we resurrected this capacity to listen to the crying voices of our fellow citizens in the community of nature? We wouldn’t need to believe literally that the cliffs of Weeping Rock are calling out in pain or dire warning. We would just need to attune our ears a bit more conscientiously to the sounds of their falling water and imagine those cliffs in tears. We might thereby grow a new sensibility about nature and our place within it. One that forces us to listen to nature more carefully, not simply as a collection of lovely things for our mindless enjoyment, but as a community of beautiful beings with whom we mindfully share this planet that is our home.
Dan Ornstein is the rabbi of Congregation Ohav Shalom and a writer living in Albany, NY. He is the author of Cain v Abel: A Jewish Courtroom Drama (2020, The Jewish Publication Society.) Check out his writings at danornstein.com
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