How?

Recently, I was sitting on the porch of our mountain cabin, pondering the fundamental questions. I enjoy doing this as a thought experiment, as it pleasantly tickles my mind. "How?" emerged as the most important after the foundational "Why?". Inevitably, I remembered a story dear to my heart:

In our yard, we have the dubious pleasure of traversing thick human-sized tallgrass in the sunny season or sticky mud snatching shoes in the rainy one.

We made a decision - my grandfather and I would lay a stone path. Reasons aplenty - the "why?" was already redundant.

Materials - check. Enthusiasm - in excess, knowledge - zero! Here comes the "How?”.

Well, why the hell not! Sometimes you can pull it off with no brain, just muscle. And that's how it went. We had less than a day to finish the job.

"Come here! Here, you mix it now. I can't bend as easily!" He shoved the bucket of cement into my hands. "Now pour it here! Quicker,boy! Ehh, the material won't be enough!" he sighed. I went to buy more, while work on the path continued in a flurry of stone and cement.

A few hours later, the path was completed. How beautiful it was and how nice it was to walk on! A bit uneven, but no grass, no mud - problem solved! Yeah, no!

Years passed, and meanwhile nature kept applying pressure relentlessly. Speck by speck, stone by stone, the seemingly beautiful path met its old enemy - the tallgrass.

In its second year, small grass began to sprout here and there. Its tiny seeds would fall into the cracks between the stone slabs, and with the help of regular rains alternating with scorching sun, they found their way to the surface. In their struggle for life, they were like seagulls on the roof of a kebab shop. We easily pulled them out every year.

Gradually, over time, they multiplied, grew taller and thicker, and one day, just a few years after the construction, we were once again greeted by human-sized tallgrass.

Krassy, a close family friend, came to visit. He looked at the overgrown path with slight disapproval, but without saying a word him and his wife helped clear it. The path shone again. We looked around, satisfied with our work, but there it was - an eyesore! One of the larger stones had chipped off completely ruining the stone path.

"Do you have any cement?" I nodded affirmatively. "Come on, let's mix some, and I'll show you how to do it. We'll fix the chip together, and you can do the rest yourself."

We rolled up our sleeves - he demonstrated, I followed closely. "Pour some here. Now put the slab on top. Do it carefully. Now press on it lightly. Yes, just like that.”

Years passed, but I didn't manage to redo the entire stone path. “In due time,” I tell myself. This year, once again, I was greeted by tallgrass, their withered stalks reaching for the sky. But somewhere, at the edge, there is a spot where there is no grass.

Not a blade.

Not even a speck of moss.