In the summer of 2026, Mona the cellist hitchhiked along Highway 17. Forest fires had been burning for weeks. Some days the air smelled like a campfire. Mona carried her cello in a battered case covered with stickers from Sudbury, Thunder Bay and Elliot Lake. One evening, after a ride with a trucker who listened exclusively to 1980s hair metal radio, she was dropped off by a rest stop outside Wawa. There, on a picnic table, sat an elderly man, Herb, with a paper cup from Tim Hortons and a broom made from spruce branches. He was brushing dust from the tabletop even though the table was wet from rain.
“Is this spot taken?” Mona asked.
Herb looked up.
“It belongs to whoever can hear it,” he replied.
She laughed politely. They chatted. He told her he’d once been a forest ranger, then a night janitor, then “a bit of nothing, which is the most demanding job ever” When the conversation lulled, Mona asked, “I’m trying to play with more feeling. Something’s missing. You know anywhere around here I could practice?”
Herb led her behind the rest stop, to a large glacial boulder. A single loon called from somewhere far off, the sound echoing.
“Pick up a piece of this rock,” he said.
She broke off a small chip and held it in her hand.
“Now play the note that lives inside it.”
Mona rolled her eyes but played a deep, resonant C. The old man shook his head.
“Nope. That’s something you brought from Toronto.”
She tried an A, a D. Again he shook his head.
“Nope. That’s not the rock’s.”
Frustrated, she said, “Rocks don’t sing, they sit there.”
He smiled.
“Most think music is made by the hands. But it’s really made by what you’re willing to stop hearing.”
He sat down beside the boulder.
“Listen to it until you no longer hear yourself.”
Mona sat silently, wanting to play something clever, to prove something, to show she was worthy of the cello she carried like a second spine. Her breathing slowed. A kind of stillness arrived the kind northern forests sometimes grant to people who aren’t in a rush. At dawn, mist rising off the highway, she lifted her cello again. The bow touched the string, almost by itself. What came out was more a timbre, a vibration that blended with the wind. Herb nodded.
She looked at him.
“What did I play?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Ask the rock.”
When she turned back, the boulder looked like someone who had held in a secret for years and had finally been asked the right question. Mona packed up her cello, slung it over her shoulder, and stepped toward the highway. Cars hummed past. The sun rose over Lake Superior, and she felt inexplicably that she learned something she would spend the rest of her life trying not to forget.