Shaking things up and making an impression.

A gentle giant doing gymnastics.

It’s perhaps not as graceful as a ballerina or an accomplished gymnast, but it was the vision that was in my head.

He’s not a mean giant, but a gentle giant. He’s also not dim-witted, but clever and even wise. Somehow, with that huge body, he managed to do those backflips without a trampoline, the cartwheels that look effortless and end it all in something of a jump-spin-vault.

Being that he’s a giant and all, he’s indenting the earth, even flattening trees and moving boulders that he nudges. He doesn’t want to destroy things, but he can’t stop his momentum, he just needs to make these movements. It’s part of who he is and he can’t help it.

His family walks along the same path, behind him for a while–you wouldn’t really want to be in front of him as he is something of a tumbling bulldozer. He wouldn’t want to hurt a butterfly, but he will crush you if you get in the way.

It’s not so much that leaves a path of destruction, but rather a change in the landscape from how it was. He’s leaving his mark, his footprint, his trail as he blazes forward.

Eventually, he slows down and stops the jumping and spinning and tumbling. The backflips and even no-handed front flips–that shake the earth for miles around–turn into a prance, then a gait, the he walks or maybe struts and his oversize body returns to human size and he is again one with the others.

Shaking things up and making an impression.