For the Love of Rock

Since I could formulate a written paragraph I’ve been a writer. What does it mean to be a writer? To me, it means you write for the love of writing. Writing is an essential part of your life. When you don’t write, your heart aches. It’s in your soul to express through the written word. To a writer, writing is god in a way. A way to take the feeling, the confusion, the passion, the crazy, and the desire for connection, and manifest it into the concrete world. Why god? It’s the bridge. The connection between the ethereal that is the true self, into the tangible physical world where we must engage. Writing is this to a writer. You don’t have to be published. You don’t have to share your work, or even be good at it. It simply just needs to be a part of your make up.

The same is true for anything in my opinion. Maybe you’re a cook, a painter, musician, hunter, care taker, gardener, engineer. It’s how you express yourself. It’s the bridge, the fire, the expression of love and desire.

I published my first book in 2012. That began a path of writing and publishing other books. I sell some out there. Mostly I love to give them away and pass them around. I never tried to be published by a company, to have an editor or agent. Sometimes I berated myself for this, sometimes not.

I’ve recently learned, or perhaps admitted, that I have no desire to sell books. I don’t want to do book readings or book signings. I don’t want to be part of a writers group or take a writers class. I don’t really want to do anything that’s involved in being a successful writer. So why keep writing books and putting pressure on myself to sell them, and feeling like a failure and a slacker that I’m not, when truth be told it’s simply not what I want to do. I can still be a writer – I am still a writer – I just don’t want to be an author.

But rocks. Rocks are different. I only discovered my deep love and connection to rocks in the summer of 2012. Before then, boulders and rock formations always caught my interest. The transformation began in Wyoming at Custer State Park. My connection to the rocks was so strong I even wrote a book about it. In 2013, the love grew even deeper when once again I found myself in a different part of Wyoming, Boysen State Park, on a beach covered in wind and river polished stones of all types. I’d never paid much attention to individual tiny stones before. The beach was littered in agate, petrified wood, feldspar, aventurine, banded iron and jasper and much more. Of course I didn’t know the names at the time, but I fell in love. I began collecting. Outside the park limits of course. The state of Wyoming struck me so intensely and changed me in a way I wrote a book about it as well.

In 2019, in the desert of Oregon, I fell into a chasm of spirit. In the stillness of vast open nothingness I slipped away. No planes, cars, birds. Rarely even a fly. No wind. The kind of silence where the only thing you can hear is the hum of the earth. Where thoughts are so loud and penetrating, inner silence is a demand. With nothing to tether me to the physical plane, I fell into the void. I sank into the rocks and the sun penetrated deep into the core of my being, evaporating droplets of past grievances.

I melted into my surroundings. I was the mountain of rock. The observer. Having spent millions of years in silence watching the world pass me by.

There is something so all powerful about sinking into a stone monolith. To find silence and solitude and ease your vibration in alignment with the stone. To melt into it, so the energies are joined. And then just be. In stillness.

It’s different than with a tree of course. Imagine the rain forest opposed to the desert. They’re both alive, breathing, and growing. But the forest is vibrant, it can completely overcome an old temple, bury it as if it never was, in only a few centuries. But the desert is slow. It can take up to 70 years for a saguaro cactus to reach maturity and bloom for the first time. The forest is brimming with life. Insects everywhere. Birds, squirrels, a plants growth can be measured weekly. The trees, the creek, the leaves blowing in the wind. The flies buzz. The ants crawl. The woodpeckers peck. All around life changing, growing, communicating before your very eyes.

But the desert, though full of life as well, is slow. Quiet, patient, resilient. In the forest trees fall, branches break, new trees grow. Constant change. In the desert, everything is dry, the ground is cracked, brittle. It’s hot. The sun scorches. What life there is hides, or sits. Rocks breathe, they grow and change. But over hundreds or thousands of years. Erosion and weathering. The desert is not like today’s fast paced ever changing world of Ipads and video games. The desert is a stillness like old deaf grandma out in her rocking chair. The desert needs a metaphysical microscope to study its changes. One must have patience, calm, and quiet.

But I don’t just speak of the desert. I speak of stone. Tapping into the vibration of a boulde is like tapping into the energy of all the ancestors over the past millennia. A peace, knowledge, calm and understanding. The power feels god like. The forest is changing, but rocks have been here a long time.

I mean. Come on. Rocks. Igneous rocks come from the core of the earth. The CORE of the earth! How much more from the center of where everything started can you get? From igneous rocks being buried and under great heat and pressure we get metamorphic rocks. Or any rocks being busted up through erosion and then compacted and cemented, we get sedimentary rocks. And sedimentary rocks under great heat and pressure, back to metamorphic. And metamorphic that melt, back into lava and spewed out a volcano and we get igneous once more.

Rocks changing and transforming, combining with organic matter on occasion – but essentially all come from the core of the earth. And we tap into that vibration – we tap into the core of ourselves – of the earth – of the beginning – of god.

So while, as a writer, writing is a bridge from my inner goddess expressed in the manifest. It is only my expression. My bridge. But the stone is something else. The stone is god itself. Sent up from the core of the earth. Holding within it all the answers, truth, and stillness. While there are a lot of rockhounders out there, many people pass by rocks without a second thought. Even rocks that may be holding opals. Fossils, crystals – hidden in the matrix.

But when you take a stone and you peel off the outer grime that’s collected from years of sitting in stillness. When you then shape it into something a person connects with on a deeper level, and you get it to shine so that its worth may be recognized by many. Now a person will welcome the stone into their heart. They will take that piece of god rising up from the center of the earth and connect with it. The stone has the potential to provide a gateway into the core. Embracing not just the power of all past lives, and stillness, but also the shape of the stone. A lion, an elephant, platypus, etc embarking the power of the creature combined with the power of the stone.

This is not at all to say that trees, wood, does not also hold a power and piece of god. This is in no way to denounce the forest or woodwork. Just to differentiate the energy. For great power hides in wood as well. But I am not a wood worker, though I am a lover of trees and the forest.

When I bring an inner life out of the stone – I feel like I’m unveiling god. And when I exchange a carving with someone – it’s like I dressed god up in fancy clothes and presented it to someone in a way that best speaks to them. And god is happy for the connection, recognition, and bridge. I don’t know how the receiver feels, but I feel like I’ve placed an orphan in a good home. There is peace in my soul.