[Garden Memories: VIII]
Rocks have spiritual potential. I don’t mean that in a crystal-and-magic sort of way, though I’m not going to deny that people who wear crystal pendants might be onto something. I’m just not one of those people. I mean it in a much more basic way.
I’ve spent hundreds of hours extracting river rocks when I cleared the ground for a garden in Idaho. I’ve broken my back contending with rocks trying to install drainage in Tennessee. I’ve built rock walls with lava rock in Hawaii and ripped off my toenail in the process. I’ve worked until pure exhaustion installing French drains with rocks in California. I’ve built rock paths, rock pillars, and rock borders.
Rock work is the most basic manual labor. There’s not winning. No notoriety. No awards and bonuses. It’s humble work that requires braun and long-suffering. And humans have been doing it forever.
The Maidu Indians are native to the land I grew up on. They too contended with rocks. While the men hunted, the women collected acorns to grind into flour for bread and thickener for soups. With a small rock in hand, they would use the granite outcroppings as giant mortars. Over many years, this mortar and pestle technique ground dimples in the stone that still remain.
If we allow them, rocks connect us to an ancient past. They stretch us beyond our immediate awareness and offer us an antidote to amnesia. In this way, rocks widen us to the broader, longer human story of working with (and sometimes against) creation. Rocks have spiritual potential because they too ground us in our common humanity.
