A recycled one today from Facebook. Enjoy 😘
A lifelong rock collector, I aptly and ironically moved to a place where the soil is unyieldingly stony and I curse every time I try to claw away a space to plant even the smallest of plants.
My bare feet soon acquiesced to their fate and hardened but my heart continued to long for the soft and heady loams of home.
And yet, when I take the time to remember, I am reminded that I've never met a rock I didn't like.
My son brings me a "good rock" indistinguishable from every other rock to the untrained eye.
But to the rock connoisseur this rock is a marvel.
A triumph of timing.
A rock as unique as the human who found it with it's own story.
I think of this rock as it made it's way from the womb of the Earth and into a range that would one day be named Tararua.
I think of this rock as it left this home, ever downward, each leg of it's journey a story bound with the journey of water.
I think of the rocks in my garden, stranded as the ice that carried them melted in a time before humans came to this land, doomed never to reach the sea when we decided that their wetland home was an inconvenience and drained and diverted their last chance to meet it.
I think of all the rocks I have picked up and wonder if mine are the first human hands to touch this one.
I think of the rocks I collected as a child, the rocks I threw when I was called to the water in times of despair - at least I thought it was the water, perhaps it was the rocks all along.
My son brings me more good rocks and we fill a bag to take home.
My daughter luxuriates on the rocks drawing heat and energy from them like a lizard.
The rocks have a smell - not the dynamic life and death mash up smell of the geologically young Taranaki soil.
Their smell is older, subtler, the smell of summers spent seeking the cool of a body of water, a smell that imparts the wisdom of permanence.
I impart my blessing to my rock, holding it to my face, feeling it's warmth, breathing a smell that's starting to feel like home.
I toss my rock to the water.
Go well on your journey, may we meet again one day on some sandy shore my friend.