“I don’t want to change the world. We have changed the world to a point that it is barely recognizable. I think it’s time to stop thinking change and try to hold on to what beauty and function remains.”

Diana Six,  Entomologist

When I was four years old I was already a veteran explorer. I lived in a house surrounded by open fields, miles from our closest neighbor. My sister was not yet born so I had no one to play with. I had no TV, no video games, nothing much to keep me entertained except for my own curiosity.

Every morning, as soon as I was done eating breakfast, I would head out, looking for interesting “finds.” I rarely came home before dinner and I almost always brought back some “treasure” I had found during my daily walkabout.

Sometimes it was a small critter — a slug or a snail. Or maybe a handful of berries or a bouquet of wild flowers. Once, I came home with a bird that had broken his wing, certain that I could heal him. I begged my mother for a small box we could put him in and I made him a nest with hay I got from my father. I fed him bread crumbs, seeds and little worms I dug out of our yard. I checked on him first thing every morning until one day, I woke up to find an empty box. I still don’t know if he did get better and was able to fly away or if he didn’t and my parents decided to put him out of his misery.

Back then, I knew all about the wonders and beauty we can find in our world if we are willing to spend a little time looking for them. But then I got older. Once I started school, my days were no longer mine to spend wandering around in the fields. And then when I was 13, I moved to the United States, a different world altogether. Tarrytown, NY is a lovely town but it was like a different planet to me then; the lush, empty fields had been replaced by concrete.

Later, like most adults, I focused on work, being a wife and raising a child. It wasn’t until my world fell apart about five years ago that I rediscovered the beauty and awe that nature can bring into our lives. There are many ways to connect with the natural world but for me, it was the humblest of objects, a simple and unassuming stone – actually it was thousands of them that covered the ground on my friend’s property in Saylorsburg — that helped me see life from a new perspective, that brought me a sense of peace and balance at a time when I was feeling hopeless and lost.

Here I share with you how I came to appreciate these simple but unique stones and how others throughout the ages and in every corner of the world find joy by collecting and admiring stones.

1510

How happy is the little Stone
That rambles in the Road alone,
And doesn’t care about Careers
And Exigencies never fears—
Whose Coat of elemental Brown
A passing Universe put on,
And independent as the Sun
Associates or glows alone,
Fulfilling absolute Decree
In casual simplicity —

Emily Dickinson

 

Banner Photo: Hillside in Pen Argyl, PA., courtesy of Brenda Fulmer