Falling in Love with Rocks

The rocks sit along the sea, getting washed by the tides each morning and evening. How round, how clean, and how colorful they are, even under the gray, gray sky.

See them. Aren't they so individual and uniquely beautiful?

The rocks remind me of some that I still dearly love.

In my landscaped garden in Massachusetts, one special garden spot was shaped the was a child would draw a simple house. Leading to the house garden was a mud path about three feet long and two feet wide. The path had railroad ties on either side. I made that a mosaic by filling it with small stones.

I found every stone in my back yard and carried it to it’s new home.

Stone hunting I would call it. I felt like a squirrel find food for the winter, as I walked around the backyard, looking for tiny rocks to add to my tiny project. The project transformed me and my relationship with rocks and stones.

I soon saw each stone as a possibility, an object of wonder. Sometimes I’d stand and turn the most usual rock around in my fingers again an again. I so enjoyed the point of imagining the colors, textures, of the stones when they would all be together.

Each stone took two or three minutes to place in that mud path, making that little mosaic took almost all summer.

I didn’t set or seal the path. I wanted it to last only as long as nature would have it. The garden was in a forest – a natural habitat. I didn’t need more than that.

I wasn’t making a path or even a mosaic anyway.

I was learning to fall in love with rocks. And I did a fine job at that.

See those rocks by the sea. Aren't they so individual and uniquely beautiful?

−me strauss Letting me be