Bi-Weekly Topics for February 15, 2004
Stones in sermon
By On the Rocks
I have been a rock fan for years, but I can't qualify as a rock "hound" because I can't remember what they're called. The nice thing about rocks, though, is that they aren't offended when you get their names wrong.
In a fundamental way that food and buildings and poets cannot overwhelm, rocks ARE a place. There isn't a place on Earth without them, providing shape and a sort of fingerprint that marks each region as itself, unlike all others.
I am a geology fan, in the way some guys sit down on Sundays and get themselves worked up about football, but then go on about their lives for the rest of the week except for occasional conversations that go, "Aaah, those Browns!"-- "Bah!"
I caught the bug from teachers in high school and college who were true devotees, and I might have pursued it further, but for an inability to recognize the rocks themselves ("Gabbro?" I hazard. "Micaceous schist, fool!" I hear). Since one can't go far in geology without having one's schists together, I quickly sought a more suitable career. But I never lost my attraction to stones and the bedrock they came from.
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It may run in the family. My grandfather brought back from his travels wonderful lumps of pink and rose quartz for his rock garden out behind the garage; they were salvaged when he broke up housekeeping and now grace my father's garden along with great lumps of garnet someone else fetched from the Adirondacks, and water-smoothed hunks of fossil-rich shale from central New York.
Without any prompting, my daughter got it, too -- or else it's the magpie gene that all of us share and have to outgrow. At 2, she took so many pieces of decorative crushed marble from a neighbor's front garden that I had to buy him another bag. She gathered crushed shale from her grandfather's driveway -- to me, just fill, but to her, a souvenir of her trip. What was I to say? I have my share of such bits: Weathered, rounded, tan sandstone pebbles from off the New England coast -- maybe a few of them are marble; fragments of smooth limestone from New York creeks; a fragile piece of Florida sand cemented together -- in the process of becoming rock -- with lime from shells. On a trip to Alaska, we collected several pounds of rounded basalt (probably) pebbles, black with tiny flecks of quartz and sometimes a hint of coppery green, for a dripping-dish thing that we never completed. In my mind, the rocks became a symbol of the halcyon summer before 9/11, for it would never have been possible to lug those, and a handful of thrift-store silverware, onto an airplane afterward.
My household has several little collections of crinoid stems and bivalves set in shale, for my wife picks up stones, too. A book-sized hunk of coal down cellar, fished from a red-bottomed Kentucky creek where the only life was a green slime, reminds me of a trip and what I fear about mining.
The soft Devonian shales of my boyhood home cut like cake under the knife of glacial runoff, and after the glaciers went, streams that remained cut deep, fascinating gorges I loved to explore. My present hometown has the same pattern of glens and gullies, and it gives me pleasure to recognize them, buried as they are in the urban landscape. I guess it's a measure of my middle age that I've never clambered down inside.
Stones imprinted me with a couple of vivid memories. A piece of the Canadian Shield, a rusty, large-grained pebble that was wave-washed from a layer of sand at the bottom of a lake where we kids were playing, left me an image of sloshing around on a big truck tire, having fun in bright sunlight, and of shock and sudden pain when the girl next door beaned me. I must have been 6 or 7. I remember she was kept indoors all the next day to impress on her the gravity of stoning her friends. My sister suffered, too, because then she had no one to play with.
And a hunk of that Devonian shale, knocked loose by a friend I was climbing in a gorge with, sliced my eyebrow once. I remember I scrambled to the top and jogged down a safer slope to the stream at the bottom -- mainly fearful that if I didn't get the blood off my face and jacket, I would get busted and be forbidden to go up the gorge again. I guess I succeeded, but my oldest glasses still bear the bloodstain, if you look closely enough.
(Why do I still have a pair of 30-year-old glasses? I can't answer that.)
All the really gorgeous landscapes have good rocks. Well, not all of them, but the ones that sing to me. They're the bones of the place, durable and plastic; hard and unforgiving to the hasty and careless, but accommodating under the patient pressure of weight or water. I like rocks. I have never thrown one in anger.
Source: http://my.core.com/~pzicari/text/Rocks_Place.html
Rocks and Stones
By London and the North
I am half a beat away
half a stride balancing
on slippery tide ironed weed
and the oystercatchers are digging deep
curlews deeper
clumsy me arms out like wings
teetering and landbound
Visit Ecotone for todays topic on Stones and Rocks
Posted by Coup de Vent at 09:28 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBackSource: http://web.archive.org/web/20040412170103/http://www.airenet.co.uk/alife/2004_02.html
Stones and Rocks
By Older and Growing
As a rock climber, how could I resist the current Ecotone topic of "Stones and Rocks"...
England is hardly known for its rockiness. Gentle rolling hills, rural landscapes of farms, fields and hedgerows are more representative of the characteristics that we associate with Englishness. True, the borders of land and sea sometimes expose the underlying skeleton in cliffs and rocky shorelines, but for the most part that skeleton remains well hidden; England does not have the body of a lean athlete, rather that of a well-fed, even corpulent, country gentleman.
But if you know where to look, the evidence of that skeleton is there. Rock climbers have been searching out these places for decades; there’s hardly a crag or outcrop in the country that hasn’t been discovered, explored, tested, documented and revisited countless times. To the casual passer by, the significance of these places may be hardly noticed –at times picturesque, brooding, decaying; yet to the climber places of challenge, adrenalin, focus, self-discovery; places to come home to, revisiting old friends. For the climber gets to know these rocks intimately; all their forms, features, colours, textures and hidden places.
Each of these crags has a unique character; they all have a powerful draw for climbers, but in different ways. The sleeping giants of rounded sandstone laying peacefully in the Kent woods at Harrison’s Rocks; the gritstone adventure playground of Stanage Edge, a riot of tumbling blocks, buttresses, bays and chimneys, running for miles at the edge of Peak district moorland; the gentler angled nursery of Birchen Edge, rocks worn smooth and ground beneath them now heavily eroded by the feet of so many fledgling climbers; and tucked away next door, the greener rocks of Chatsworth Edge – green from lichen, green from the trees that overhang, green from the grass at the rocks’ foot, grass that remains largely untrampled. This last is a beautiful place to be at the end of an Autumn afternoon – an idyll of copper leaves, green-gold rocks and burnished skies.
The mood of these places changes dramatically with the weather and the seasons. The ominous beetling grey walls and overhangs of The Roaches in Staffordshire can be intimidating and forbidding under leaden skies; yet on a spring morning the feel turns to one of rugged charm. Birchen Edge, usually friendly and welcoming in all weathers, gains an air of mystery and loneliness when approached through Autumn mists. Perhaps that is why the three huge boulders at the edge of the moor above the crag were named after Nelson’s ships at Trafalgar, appearing as they supposedly do as three great ships under sail emerging from the mist. Lawrencefield has perhaps the most consistent feel of any crag, possibly deriving from its man-made origins as a gritstone quarry - a few abandoned mill stones can still be seen scattered around, providing a useful spot to sit and don rock shoes. Surrounded by rock on three sides, the entire south-facing quarry glows golden pink on sunny days, a colour still present in the sand at the foot of the rocks even on the gloomiest of winter mornings.
Close to, the features and textures of the rock become all important. Different rock types possess profoundly different characteristics which in turn demand quite different styles of climbing.
Sandstone can be a nightmare for the uninitiated. The soft rock cannot sustain hard edges – all features are smooth, rounded; irregularities that might provide purchase for frantically scrabbling hands and feet have been eroded to the merest undulations in the surface by the action of countless hands and feet – being the nearest rocks to London, these are over-used to the point of requiring strict etiquette to avoid destroying their recreational capacity completely. “Holds” on sandstone have a frustrating tendency to slope down and out; cracks are shallow and offer little purchase; years of being been gripped by sweaty hands have impregnated some holds with sweat leaving a permanently slimy feel; other patches carry a ball-bearing layer of sand grains causing feet and fingers to skate unwillingly over the surface.
Sandstone, not surprisingly, is not well favoured by UK climbers. Its only merit is its accessibility for those living in the South East. But move further north and an ongoing debate emerges between the aficionados of the two most common rock types in the climbing areas in the central core of the country. Limestone calls for delicacy of touch; gritstone – God’s Own Rock – yields to a more gymnastic approach, earning its followers the nickname of “Gritstone Monkey” . For all its apparent smoothness, limestone, especially when weather-washed and free from vegetation, has the texture of very fine sandpaper, giving surprising grip even on smooth surfaces – in the dry. In the wet though, it turns treacherously greasy and unclimbable – best not to get caught in a storm when on limestone. Gritstone on the other hand is courser, rougher, can and will give you bloody knuckles and even a rash-like effect on the fingertips at the end of the day, caused by pressure on the skin of tiny pin-sharp grains of quartz. Yet the rough surface texture acts like the tread on a tyre, providing grip from those same points of quartz grains even when a veritable waterfall is running over the slabs. Limestone tends to have small, sharp, hard edges, demanding precision, balance and trust in the strength of the fingertips. Gritstone weathers to more rounded shapes; holds tend to be larger – the best known as jugs (short for jug-handles) for obvious reasons, especially those pulse-relieving “thanks God” holds.
So it is that, known so well, so intimately, the rock becomes a friend, sharing some of the most intense moments of relationship. Unyielding, it can stand aloof; repelling all onslaughts it can be a tormentor; calling forth focus and self belief it becomes a coach; allowing freedom for expression and deep self-examination it is a counsellor; sharing the joy – and sometimes the pain –of being alive it is a friend.
Lifeless it is not.
posted by andy @ 4:20 PM permalink
Comments
Hi Andy. Good to find someone else in blogland who appreciates the stonescape of the (dis-)UK. I don't climb - in the serious sense. Just try to stay upright when walking over the limestone pavements of Malham or when looking up to admire the strange shapes of Brimham Rocks. Great climbing/outcrops around where I am in the Millstone Grit of North and West Yorkshire. Good also to find another 'local' person writing on Ecotone!
this is another of those times where I wished the story could go on and on forever, entranced as I was in the telling of the tale.
I've always been particularly fond of texture and touch, and this articulate and evocative glimpse into the differences (and similarities) did not disappoint.
Excellence again, andy. Bravo.
Great writing Andy.
Trouble is I have always found rock so unyielding when I fall!
Source: http://olderandgrowing.blogspot.com/2004_02_01_olderandgrowing_archive.html#107686202956918076
Indian Rock
By Feathers of Hope (Numenius)
An entry for the Ecotone Wiki's topic on Stones and Rocks.
Berkeley, in addition to its fame as a center of development of California cuisine (the town's radical past now usurped by the gourmet ghetto on Shattuck Avenue), is also noteworthy as one of the original training grounds for modern rock climbing. In the 1930s, the California mountaineers who would go on to do many of the first ascents in the Sierra Nevadas, among them Dick Leonard and David Brower, would practice their bouldering techniques in North Berkeley where there is a set of crags composed of rhyolite.
Indian Rock is the most famous of these boulders. It got its name from nearby mortar basins in the rock used by natives for grinding acorns. It is less than a mile from my old house, and I would often go there on a walk. It has a great view from the top, and as can be seen from the steps in the photo, you don't have to go up the steep side with ropes to get to the top.
Posted by Numenius at February 15, 2004 10:46 PM
Source: http://www.magpienest.org/feathersofhope/archives/2004/02/15/indian_rock.html
Interludes with the Rocky World
By Switched At Birth
It was a mid-June late afternoon in Bass Harbor, Maine. The tide was close to dead low. Buck and I walked out to the farthest point on the rocks. Sharp rocks, slippery places and pools teeming with life, we had to take care in placing each step. Thousands of mussels glistened blackly, shimmering silver, green and purple. The sea gulls wheeled hungrily overhead.
The gulls' ritual was mesmerizing: flying low to pick up a mussel, they would angle out over a large flat rocky expanse, drop the mussel to crack its shell, then dive to scoop up and eat the live creature inside.
We spied a huge coral-colored starfish in a crevice, the largest either of us had ever seen. The thought of removing him (killing him) and taking him home with me briefly fluttered across my primitive brain, and just as instantly was rejected. The rocky pools were home to many smaller starfish, as well. Some coral colored like the first; others brown, silvery or blue. The brown ones struck me as reptilian, snakelike and--with all deference to snakes -- a little creepy. The blue ones were mysterious and elegant.
We became so involved our explorations that we failed to notice the tide had turned. It was time to get back to shore -- quickly!
Once there, we changed into our soft clothes, fixed a drink, and began to make preparations for dinner. Sitting at a round wood table in front of an old-fashioned picture window, we watched, facinated, as the tide inexorably rolled in, obliterating the individual pools and rocks. We threw on our jackets and went outside for a closer look.
One of the fattest cats I have ever seen came waddling up to be admired, his bright orange fur rocketing showers of hair and dander as he rubbed, univited, against our legs. We walked over to sit at a small picnic table, paint peeling from its legs. The cat leaped onto the center of the table, rolled over on his back, paws waving, and eyed us flirtatiously as if to say, "Okay. I've gone straight to my best trick. Now, how about sharing some of that delicious-smelling crabmeat with me?" I flicked a few drops of scotch and water on his head instead, and like a shot he was off his back, onto his feet, and twelve feet away from the table, clearly indignant at being treated so disrespectfully.
In no time at all, however, the sounds of a family next door and the voices of young children at play wafted through the rose hedge. He smoothed his ruffled fur, put on his cat smile, and sashayed off to ply his charms with the neighbors. Judging by this fellow's size, his act is usually a big hit.
It was growing dark, and the midges drove us indoors for our dinner. What a feast: locally grown tomatoes and butter and sugar corn from Sawyers Market in Southwest Harbor, along with pristine crabmeat from The C. H. Rich Crab Company in Bass Harbor, gently seasoned and warmed.
We took a bowl of rich chocolate ice cream upstairs to indulge in while reading. All was well for a few minutes. . . until my right eyelid and underneath the eye began to feel itchy. Without meaning to, I started rubbing it. Then a lump developed on both eyelids, and the resultant swelling was ugly and uncomfortable.
The rest of the night was a rocky routine of cold compresses and benedril. I thought a black fly or mosquito was responsible. But when we returned home, an allergy test revealed "CAT".
Despite a swollen face, we went out exploring again the next day at the Acadia National Park. We went for our third visit in as many years to the Valley Cove section. At one spot there, the trail momentarily ends and rock to rock climbing around a high cliff area with no room for error begins. A major slip, and you face jagged rocks, and a sheer long drop to the water below. This day, the length of the most dangerous portion was not was long as either of us recalled, but the Acadia Mountain ascent seemed both longer and more difficult than we remembered.
Lunchtime found us at the peak of Acadia Mountain, and we spotted a flat rock to sit on, stretch out our legs and enjoy a sandwich. Re-energized, we headed down the mountains, crossed a carriage road, and made the easy climb up St. Sauveur Mountain. At the exquisite Valley Peak, we ventured off the trail onto an outcropping of rock overlooking Frenchman Bay and the ocean. It was an inspiring site, and a great place to share an apple. Several impudent chipmunks agreed, scurrying boldly about, trying to get into our backpacks! It was a dazzlingly bright day, dry and cool.
I am thinking back today about how surreal it felt to return to Pensacola, which was flying hurricane flags at the time: sultry and humid, with heavy rain, thunder and lightning in the high winds.
12:09 PM in Travel | Permalink
Source: http://web.archive.org/web/20040812222556/longleaf.typepad.com/switched_at_birth/2004/02/index.html
Places of the spirit - sacred stones
By Mulubinba Moments
In 1998 I went to visit my sister in Cheddar, UK, for the first time. This trip was special as I was travelling on my own having left the children at home with my parents. (Geoff was off on one of his “spiritually uplifting” holidays - windsurfing with friends in Maui). One of Sue and my favourite pastimes on that trip was to explore the countryside around Somerset/Devon using the Ordnance Survey maps. We had no children to keep entertained and therefore could wander at will...luxury! The Ordnance Survey maps have almost everything imaginable marked on them from houses to ruins to stone circles and tumuli. I was particularly curious about the prehistoric sacred sites and so was keen to explore the countryside on a mission to find as many as I could. We had spent the day up on Exmoor, lunched at Porlock Weir and were driving up the old toll road towards the main road when I noticed a standing stone marked on the map not far off the road - we decided, naturally, to see if we could find it. It was early evening in June - the light was soft and muted. As we walked along the path to the stone we noticed the vegetation had changed to a woodland of very dark, low trees. It was eerily silent and brooding. The Culbone Stone as it is called was standing in the middle of a tiny clearing, completely on its own. It had a wheel cross inscribed on it which seemed strangely out of place. Around its base the grass had been flattened as if people had been standing or dancing there. No one was about and I had the distinct impression we were trespassing on forbidden territory - the atmosphere was “watchful”. This was a place of ancient spirits from a time long ago. We stayed long enough to take a photo and then retreated hastily. It had been a very wierd but nonetheless hugely spiritual place.
While preparing this post I was able to discover that the Culbone stone had been discovered in 1940. The wheel cross was incised around 7th to 9th Century. Apparently it is located close to a stone row which implies however that the stone had once been a prehistoric monument that had been Christianised. Was the surrounding ambience of that woodland resentment perhaps? Click the search button at the Megalithic Portal to read how TimP describes his impressions of the Culbone Stone and includes a photo taken from a slightly different angle. Some people commenting on his photo claim to see a face - check out his article.
I found this a very interesting post. By reading it, it gave me a sudden urge to jump onto a plane and fly to England to check it out. I am one of those people who are very interested in witchcraft, magic and magical places. When next i travel to England i must check out this place. I will also keep looking at your weblog, in my personal opinion i think it is very well set out, very interesting and well written. Keep up the good work.
I'm curious if you noticed the likeness of the face when you were there. It seems quite clear in your photo and even clearer in the one on the Megalithic Portal page. I would imagine that if you were not conscious of it, it could have had a strong, and perhaps frightening, subliminal effect on your perceptions of the stone. Also, does it look as if the face was actually carved there by people, or is it just a coincidence, like the face on mars? It looks like the texture of the face is different than that of the rest of the rock.
Buck & I will be on the Isle of Arran in Scotland this September. The "standing stones of Machrie" on Machrie Moor there are somewhat famous. I am especially looking forward to seeing them now that I've read this post, and will be sure to send you a photo!
Emergence
I am so off stride these last few days, waking up late after unrestful "sleep" as the nasoraptors prowl the aveolar caves and tracheal trees for prey. They come and they go, but even when they are gone, my mind and my hands are disjunct, cut off from one another, the supply lines severed by troop movements in the night.
The logistics of war make for lousy reading, so I am keeping my muddled thoughts confined to quarters. The poor muse is taking Universal Precautions--gloves, mask, and gown-- and so at the moment it is quite impossible to hear from her anything she might divulge on which to write. I hear only the sound of one lung wheezing, the Zen of the Rhinovirus. This, too, shall pass.
The warm sun yesterday was therapeutic for both of us. We spent a good bit of the day outside getting the wood-storing area ready for a new layer of gravel, there, and along the driveway this week coming up. We pried up the locust runners and small flat cinderblocks from the frozen muck. The stacks close to the house are gone now, used down to the ground. Those blocks and chunks and sticks of firewood blessed us with comfortable radiant heat over a hard winter, and now are reduced to only so much ash to show for all those years of hardwoods standing tall in the forest, and then two years segmented in the rank and file of human necessity.
After we get the gravel in, we'll put the runners back down and start rebuilding the woodpile for next year. Several cords of maple and hickory, oak and poplar are waiting over in the pasture where they have been stored in lengths, teepee-style, for almost a full year already. It will be good and dry come next September. And I have three large trees (two windfall, one power company line clearing victim) down and waiting to be bucked up into stovewood. I'm saving that work for when Ann's sisters come to visit in a couple of weeks. The estrogens will be so high for a while around here that a fella will want a place to go do manly work. Or pretend to.
The dog thought he'd died and gone to heaven with not one but TWO of his humans outside yesterday afternoon for the sole purpose of entertaining him, and of course, also to watch him show off by digging in the soggy sides of the branch like a dervish. Every piece of wood we moved out of the way was something for him to prance around with, taunting us to catch him. The more we organized the more he disorganized--cosmos chasing chaos on the small scale.
We saw our first butterfly flitting around in the low sun, its shadow appearing on the ground where we were working before we traced the angle back to find the frittilary overhead, fresh from a long winter nap under a rock overhang up on the ridgetop, perhaps. We reckoned that during the day we might find our first flower in bloom--a Coltsfoot, transplanted along the driveway where I'd been raking dead leaves away earlier in the day. Just as the sun sank behind the western ridge, I found the naked, leafless yellow bloom along the rock wall where the stones hold heat and speed up the bloom date by at least a week.
This morning, the first bluebird, calling from the highest branch of the maple across the road from the front porch, its chirping whistle unmistakable--a declarative, then an interrogative phrase in a nasal register. Where has this male been since we last heard from his kind in October? Perhaps just down mountain twenty miles from here--in Roanoke or Woolwine--where temps are ten degrees warmer and a few insects emerge on warmer winter days, providing a snack to tide the birds over until later. But even now, what will they eat until the insects get active again? Maybe the bluebird saw our fritillary butterfly yesterday and had him to dinner.
Keep your TheraFlu. Spring in these small doses are a homeopathic dilution of the season ahead, and more than enough tonic to chase away the dregs of a winter cold.
Comments
Fred - spring trumps winter once again, and trumps the flu, too.
This was so beautifully written, with heavy doses of that usual wit and charm, and laced with tidbits of spring. How refreshing to hear the bluebirds sing, and enjoy Tsuga's chaos, and especially to see the yellow bud that clings to the warmth of the rocks. Thanks for sharing.
"The logistics of war" may have made reading tough for you, but I can't see they hurt your writing much - if anything, you have been writing even more engagingly than usual since you came down with the cold. So maybe you better just stay sick, then, for the sake of your readers?
O.K., bad joke, sorry!
What kind of fritillary? I am used to seeing mourning cloaks and Compton's tortoise shells at the equivalent point in our calendar; don't know that I've ever seen anything else. But your lepidopterae are considerably more diverse than Pennsylvania's, I suspect.
Today's post reminds me of the period in my life when I lived in Seaford, Virginia (1979-1985). We raised an organic garden, canned the produce and heated the whole house with wood I cut and bucked. My former wife worked in stained glass, and we called this "our Mother Earth phase." I ran up and down the country roads, sometimes as much as 50 miles a week. I'd come home and sit in the hot tub. This time of year, I would become obsessed with "cheating winter," which consisted of celebrating the warm days and taking weeklong vacation trips anywhere where it was warm. My life now is very much different, we follow our forks in the road, but I guess the point is to relish it all, as it happens.
Marking Place
By Feathers of Hope (Pica)
For the Ecotone wiki's joint topic on Stones and Rocks.
Ever since our paleolithic ancestors started painting on stone, it has been the material of choice for marking, in a more or less permanent way, a geographic location of particular significance. The art of Scottish sculptor Ian Hamilton Finlay explores this neoclassically (a commission at UC San Diego shows a 1987 example), but cairns on mountaintops are as interesting in their way as the Trajan column. Stone: permanence. Human interaction with stone: human attempt to project permanence.
Gravestones are the markers most of us will encounter, but even they are less than permanent what with acid rain and ordinary erosion. When my father was cremated, my mother scattered his ashes to the waves from the northern California clifftops by their home. At the time I missed the lack of a stone that would give me a place to visit, to mourn. A series of rocks guards the inlet where the ashes scattered five years ago. They are bigger, more imposing, than most gravestones, and during our visit there this weekend I was able to touch my father's memory by a visit to the cliff and the rocks below. The pelagic cormorants are coming into breeding plumage; California gray whales are migrating north. The surf pounds the rocks and the cycle continues. One day these rocks will be sand.
Posted by Pica at February 16, 2004 09:14 PM
Comments
My father was cremated in Florida and the whereabouts of his ashes are unknown. But there was a time when I was a child that he sang in the casino in Madeira so when I visited there as an adult I found a rock high up on the island which I designated the rock in his memory.
I love your descriptions of nature's presence.
Posted by: Coup de Vent at February 17, 2004 12:16 AMPica, that last line of yours just about knocked me off my feet. Thank you.
Posted by: Lorianne at February 17, 2004 02:40 AM
Source: http://www.magpienest.org/feathersofhope/archives/2004/02/16/marking_place.html
Stone girl dancing
By Hoarded Ordinaries
(This is my contribution to the Ecotone topic, Stones and Rocks.)
Years ago when Chris and I lived at the Cambridge Zen Center, I often did retreats at the Diamond Hill Zen Monastery in Cumberland, Rhode Island. The Cambridge Zen Center is the heart of Cambridge's Central Square, so going to Cumberland (a "thickly settled" suburb by New Hampshire standards) was like taking a country getaway.
The monastery itself is a Korean-style temple built on a hill behind the Providence Zen Center. Behind the monastery, a small woods sits tucked amidst neighboring houses: new ranches and colonials built alongside a handful of older farmhouses. Down the street is a horse farm, across the street a veterinarian maintains a small-animal practice, and not five minutes away is the usual assortment of garishly commercial drug-stores, fast food restaurants, and strip malls.
When I first started going on retreat in Cumberland, I would spend my breaks reading. Retreats in my Zen school are highly structured: everyone participates in a monastic schedule of bowing, chanting, sitting, walking, and working. After each meal, however, there is a short break when you are free to do what you'd like. Although there are prohibitions against "pleasure" reading or journaling, activities which presumably encourage excessive thinking, we were otherwise free to use our breaks as we wished: napping, doing yoga, sketching, walking.
Although reading wasn't encouraged, it wasn't explicitly prohibited. Sprinkled through the monastery was a collection of our Zen Master's books, "permitted" reading. One day early into my practice I picked up one of Zen Master Seung Sahn's books and read the following interchange:
- Long ago a Zen Master said, 'When you hear a wooden chicken crow, you will understand your mind.' What does this mean?
The student said, "A stone girl dances to the music of a flute with no holes."
The woods behind the monastery became my refuge. Sore and achy from too many hours spent cross-legged, I'd walk the woods with long, smooth strides. Several foot-beaten trails wended their way among isolated rocks, glacial erratics; the monastery itself is built on stone, its pilings driven directly into granite. Each night I'd retire to my basement bedroom with its window overlooking a small pond, trees, and those very pilings rooted in rock, my dreams nested in the earth's stony breast.
I remember on one particular retreat I sat next to one of our Zen Masters; our row of cushions faced a long picture window overlooking that same pond. We weren't supposed to look out the window during meditation; we were supposed to keep our eyes trained loosely on the floor directly in front of our meditation mat. It didn't matter, though, for I didn't need to look out the window: I'd already memorized the view I'd seen so many times before on other retreats or during walking mediation when we'd pace the wood deck outside.
No, I didn't need to look out that window as I sat because I could intensely feel what was transpiring around me. Silence hones the senses, so after hours of sitting still you become aware of nuances you typically ignore. Have been taught in my early days of Zen practice to "sit like an unmoving mountain," I was acutely aware of my body's internal rumblings or the occasional soughing and settling of the bodies sitting near me. The Zen Master I sat next to is a mountain of a man, very strong and solid, but I learned that even he sometimes sways with sleepiness or subtly corrects his sagging posture, almost but not entirely silent.
It was on this retreat that I heard it. It was in the late afternoon; we had just returned from a stint of walking meditation outside in those woods where so often I'd find solitary refuge. We had one more sitting session before breaking for dinner; the day was sloping downward into its accustomed afternoon ritual.
That was when I heard it. The room was quiet; people on either side of me were meditating with inaudible breaths. It sounded like a slow, distant train coming nearer, a muted hum with a low, bellowing resonance that inundated like a deep ringing bell. It sounded like a lowing ox or a rumbling storm; it sounded like a tornado or an approaching truck. Whatever the sound, it came not from outside, not from the picture window with its view of pond and surrounding woods, not from the moss-covered rocks that stood on either side of the monatery.
No, that low rumbling came from deep below the monastery; I could hear, feel, and visualize it vibrating from the center of the earth as it got closer, closer, closer, resonating right into my cushion, ass, then right up my meditating spine as the words appeared without emotion in my mind:
"The stone girl is dancing!"
The sound resonated for five seconds, perhaps. To this day I'm not sure if I felt that earthquake as much as I heard it approaching quite clearly from the center of the earth. There was no damage; many people in the monastery and at the bustling Zen Center down the hill neither heard nor felt it. Newspapers reported a slight but measurable tremor in the greater Providence area sometime after 3:30 pm that day; I just happened to be awake and watching at that precise moment. Mother Earth, my favorite stone girl, sometimes tires of her long sitting. Like any monk or Master, she too settles, soughs, and sighs in her seat.
Posted by lorianne at February 18, 2004 05:27 AM
Comments
O, to listen so well that we hear the mountain speak.
Magnificently told. Thank you.
Posted by: dale at February 18, 2004 08:48 AMMy coffee and fig newton tasted much better to me, accompanied as they were by your wonderfully told tale. Thanks for adding to the pleasure of my morning.
Posted by: Beth W. at February 18, 2004 09:59 AMYour story made me smile. Now if you could just work in that flute with no holes...
Posted by: Cody at February 18, 2004 12:34 PMGreat essay.
I have enjoyed earthquakes the few times I've experienced them. Usually just tremors, but once, in Taipei, a violent shaking that went on for maybe 15 seconds. An awe-inspiring realization, that this Earth is not at all a passive or lifeless creature.
Posted by: Dave at February 18, 2004 03:58 PMHello, everyone! Thanks for the kind words!
Dave, I've always told my husband I won't move to California because I hate earthquakes. But actually, I've experienced 3 mild 'quakes in my life, and none have been anywhere near California: one was in Ohio, the second was this one in Rhode Island, and the third was in our old house in Hillsboro, NH. Maybe California would be the safest place for me! ;-)
Cody, the only comments I could possibly make about the "flute with no holes" would be excessively bawdy in nature, so I'll refrain. "Silence is better than holiness." ;-)
Mmmm...fig newtons. Thanks for making *me* smile, Beth!
Posted by: Lorianne at February 19, 2004 06:09 AM
Source: http://web.archive.org/web/20040707122023/http://www.schaub.com/lori/blog/archives/000088.htm
Uluru - rock of spirits
By Mulubinba Moments
Living overseas as a little girl with a father in the Australian Embassy I would boast about the natural wonders of Australia to my friends in the hope of convincing them to come and visit. One such wonder was "Ayers Rock" or Uluru which is its official and original name. I had never seen the rock, I had simply heard of it and seen pictures in books. Two years ago our family finally decided to explore some parts of the Northern Territory including the two World Heritage sights of Kakadu National Park and Uluru. Living in a city on the Eastern coast of Australia it is difficult to appreciate just how enormous Australia is. Uluru is practically a four hour drive from Alice Springs and it is necessary to book accommodation well in advance. The road is straight with occasional dips and driving along, you are surrounded by red soil interspersed with low olive green scrub and low trees.
I was not prepared for my first sighting of Uluru - it appeared suddenly on the horizon. Its enormous size struck us when we realised it was still 60km away. It rises 318m above the desert floor and has a circumference of 8km. It extends three and a half miles below the surface. Composed of a sandstone rich in felspar it changes colour in differing atmospheric and light conditions. This photo was taken out of the car window with video (apologies for the blurred foreground - we did not own a digital camera then).
The true wonder of Uluru is the spirituality associated with it. To sit and gaze at it at sunset is intensely spiritual. It has been sacred for thousands of years - the original tribe of Anangu have ownership and it is only right that I refer you to their official website Uluru - Kata Tjuta National Park simply because they can tell its story much better than I can. If you do come to Australia, I would recommend that you make the pilgrimmage to this very sacred place.
Comments
Thanks for the post & the link. I love how the official website politely asks you not to climb Uluru but then gives safety tips in case you do.
I would love to sit and watch Uluru bathed in the glow of the setting sun. I can understand how spiritual that would be.
Lorianne, I agree with you about the safety tips. Uluru was given back to the original owners some years ago but it was after the tourist operators had set up business. People have been climbing the rock for so long now that it was deemed "unfair" to ban them from doing so. Visitors are asked to respect the sanctity of Uluru by making the decision not to climb the rock but they cannot be banned from doing so. Unfortunately many people do not value the sacred worth of places. I had the same feeling of unease when I visited some of the European cathedrals and people were posing for photos in front of the altars.
It is interesting how many giant rocks there are in the world that are considered sacred. I wonder how much it may have to do with nomadic people's using them as identifiable landmarks that can be seen from great distances. (Plus the fact that some of them are really impressive.)
Uluru does not look commercialized. It looks like you can walk right up to it, but in the States anything that might have been sacred is three times guarded and then accompanied by a Disneyland like museum.
im an 11 year old girl in year 6 who has been given a prject on uluru. i would like to know why does it glow?
hi it's kristen again. my project is due in two days and i need some help on Dick Smith so if you know any sites please tell me. also i will send you a file of my project for your help
i will send a file of it as soon as i find out how to send it.
i hope you like it.
Skipping, Tumbling, Praying Stones
By bird on the moon
In the beginning was the stone. It began to roll, and ironically, it gathered moss.
-Isadore Upinksy, Cutting the Mustard in an Ambiguously Structured Reality
As a child, my pockets were always full of stones. Id go to the riverbank, and collect stones for a whole afternoon, on the virtues of their color, size, shape and texture. Stones taught me my first lessons on uniqueness, and finding heaven within remarkably small details. Some of the best of those years remain with me, though now its rare that Ill keep a stone that has settled along my path. But Ill pause to bend down, touch, observe, and for a moment hold the cold stillness in my hand, ponder its millions of years in age, and let it go...
There was a cathartic joy in my youth in tossing rocks into the river and the mudflats, the splat and kerplunk of the Earths reception was calming to a little boy with much on his still forming and quite confused mind. One day, I remember reading a comic strip where two characters were nestled in a pen and ink equivalent of my little edge of the world. The boy tossed stone as the girl watched, lording over him a bit. She tells him that it took thousands of years for that stone to make it to the point where his grubby little hands found and tossed it, and it would take thousands of years for it to return, if at all. He sighs, suddenly fraught with guilt. I tried to toss a stone that day but couldnt, and had to be content sitting upon them, watching the play of the gulls in a mid-winters breeze, and the passing of ships, large and terribly complicated, through wild currents of the channel.
Stonehenge, the Kabaa, the Blarney Stone, Dome of the Rock, the Shivalingams of the Bramaputra River, Uluru; these stones and rocks of varying sizes mark points of pilgrimage and create around them a holy space, catalysts of ancient energies and divine messages to the faithful. Like lodestone, they gather to them the iron filings of our veneration and devotion. They seem to transform their landscapes, concave the light and transfix the viewer. We touch, kiss, grapple and clutch them, we smooth them with our passionate fingers or climbing feet. Somehow, these outcroppings and splinters of deeper Earth jab through our liminal awareness and remind the animal within what exactly we are dealing with, the nature of our nature, a crystallization of our base elements into a form that requires great strength to change. Even the mightiest river cannot forge a canyon overnight. Through stories and legends, mere pebbles become attractors of magic, and radiate a power that speaks to the heart in the molten language of its birth.
Often, if we journey to a sacred (in dogma or personal association) place, we will bring back a stone. If we dont lose it or forget its origins, when we hold it again, the memory of that place returns. I unfold the satchels of my now meager collection of rocks and travel back to Haiti, the Olympic Peninsula, Hungary, the coast of Maine or even those places I havent been; Israel, the Antarctic, Guatemala, Outer Space. To anyone else, it may seem like a bozo is on the carpet staring at rocks, to me, my passport is being stamped and Im far away. I know I cannot prove that these bits of our crust retain the essence of their origin, but they contain the molecular memory from where and whence the were birthed from the soil. How many other hands have traded and revered these stones, became lost or found in their swirls and patterns, and revered them as holy? For whom after me shall these become more than mineral, a life and process not geological but energetic, transformative, universal?
A sweat lodge near here was built on the side of a hill. After the first ceremony was performed, a boulder rolled down the hill and settled on the corner of the east gate. A visiting Chippewa elder said, this stone is a place holder. It keeps the space, like a corner stone, it anchors and affirms it within the environment. Like the Hajis revolutions around the Kabaa, the world near that hill and the bent saplings that have made a holy space for humans revolves around that tumbled boulder, which in its excitement, could have demolished or hurt. Instead, it came to rest, and assumed its duty as a pivot, or axis, between human and the world of which we are comprised but distant in mind, keeping watch over the other stones made red in the fire for our arduous prayers.
Perhaps thats the attraction we seekers have for the stones; each is a little axis, even a little planet, itself in orbit to the billion year song of the Earth and a nexus for our fleeting time upon it. Why not venerate something far older and seemingly unchanged than our quick-as-blink lives? Contact with such a stone that draws us could be like approaching a god of old times, a stalwart, a strength in times of turmoil (My Lord is a rock in a weary land, glory, halleluia!).
With stones, we heal and hurt. We toss them with Molotov Cocktails over streets of shattered glass and peace, or place them on the body with great care and delicacy, to bejewel and fascinate remind our organism of its origin. We build temples of them. For stones, we travel far, abroad and within. From a tiniest glittering grain to vast monuments of granite, we place immense value upon them, and the world around these changes through their luster or attached history. We live upon stone, and die upon it, and return to it, even if we havent returned the stones we picked up along the way. Though not alive as we define it, we are outlived by the famous and common stones, and our lives are woven by some threads of mineral that begin with the Universes beginning. Our most fundamental connection to the Earth may very well be through a stone that tumbles in our pocket, or by which we leave an offering of ourselves on our holy pilgrimages and ecstatic wanderings upon this slight sphere, skipping across the surface of totality, tossed by a young hand, creating worlds to pass the time.
Written as a contribution to Ecotone Wiki's most recent topic, "Stones and Rocks."
Source: http://web.archive.org/web/20040603111620/http://birdonthemoon.com/archive/week_2004_02_15.html
Cairns
By Cirrus
Submitted as part of the Ecotone topic: Stones and Rocks
The morning broke sunny yet hazy, mild, and calm. Not unusual, except we were staying at the Lake of the Clouds Hut, just south and 1000 feet below the normally socked-in summit of Mount Washington. Having scaled the summit yesterday, we loaded our packs and headed for the car about 4000 feet below us.
From the hut, we actually ascended a trail that would lead to the top of Tuckerman's Ravine where we would begin the descent. The trail is not really a foot path, but actually a series of foot-worn stones and rocks. Every third or fourth stone is marked with a fading white blaze. In between the stones is a mix of thin, sandy soil and tiny arctic plants clinging on for dear life. Pockets of dry sedge grass provide rustle in the light breeze which has started to kick up with the heating of the sun.
But it's the cairns that make a statement. Along our path, and on the other paths in the open plateau, stand eerie piles of stones on guard--like sentries. Over the last hundred years or so, many a traveller have collaboratively constructed these signposts to help guide hikers through the common phenomena of fog, mist, and snow. On many days, hikers find their way to the summit only by walking cairn to cairn--with faith.
But today, when the fog has lifted to reveal the series of cairns as far as the eye can see, it is otherworldy. You expect these stone sentries to move, or talk, or breathe. It makes me think of pre-historic people who used stone to mark time, seasons, years. My mind focuses on images of Stonehenge. In a century where the difference between a 0 and 1 can mean the difference between whether my bank account shows the right balance, it is hard to imagine moving large stones into position that align with a sunrise on the solstice.
On this day, I am in a world of stone. It is under my feet. It is in my line of vision, whether I look ahead or back. The world is primarily hues of brown, gray, white. This is a harsh environment but it calls so many to it. It can't be that such a world of rock makes us feel safer. The weather rakes across these rocks scraping most life down to the shortest height and only the most protected places. Do the rocks make us feel more grounded at these lofty heights? Or is it our past calling us; some spiritual connection that is embedded deep within our soul. Some argue that our souls long for the open savannahs of Africa. Well, maybe part of our soul longs for a world where large stones served our ancestors as shelter, guideposts, and timepieces.
February 20, 2004 in Ecotone | Permalink
Comments
My first experience with hiking in an area with a tradition of cairns was in the Acadia National Park on Mount Dessert Island in Maine. They are a practical (sometimes life-saving or at least foot saving) aide, of course. What I like best about them, though, is the comfort of knowing other feet have been to a place before mine, and that both good sense and good will were present, too. I enjoyed this essay very much.
Posted by: Beth W. at February 20, 2004 05:43 PM