Nature is Never Spent

Walking on dirt roads is a bit more difficult than paved, of course, because of all the loose stones, but it's also more interesting... because of all the loose stones. My favorite thing is finding broken ones. The sandstone especially will look completely boring on the outside of the rock: smooth, dirt-colored. But if you find one that has a fresh chip, you can see the patterns inside. Sometimes they're striped--red and brown, purple and white, yellow and orange. Those stripes are physical history from such a long time ago. It gives me chills.

One of the things I like about hiking in the woods and hills is seeing the different textures, the way things decay in patterns. Boulders, lichens, leaves, bark. There's such beautiful variety.

We had a really lovely morning of rain, from before I woke up until after lunch. The plants needed it, and I needed it too, I think. A soft summer rain is so restful.

By early evening, things had dried up enough for me to don rubber boots and take the dogs out for a walk. It was a ramble full of surprises. I've written about things revealed by rain before; the revelations today were especially exciting.

First, when we were barely out of the backyard, I spotted a white stone that was obviously hand-chipped, with thin, sharp edges and notches in each side at the bottom. Its top half is missing, but before being broken it was probably almost 4 inches long. That's too big and heavy for an arrowhead, so I'm thinking it's a spear point. It might never have been used. The sides look unbalanced, so it could have been worked on and then rejected. Is it a thousand years old? Four hundred? So many human generations, and now I'm holding it in my hand.



My second find was peeking out of the mud in the side of the dirt road, a white shiny surface that at first looked like glass. But it turned out to be one of the best pieces of quartz I've ever found, a double-pointed crystal about three and a half inches wide and four inches long, medium clarity with some intriguing black and iron-red impurities running through it. It feels good to hold in my hand, and I can look at it for a long time, turning it in the sun to reveal the patterns on the surface of the crystal's sides.



And then there was a stone. Just a rock, but when rocks are wet you can often see their colors and patterns better. This rock was exactly half obsidian black and half tan, and the line dividing them is perfectly straight. How would a rock like this have formed? What geologic processes and events were at work? I don't know, but it's exciting to think about.



Rocks are so good for the imagination, I tell you.